On the Reduced Product Construction

Abstract

AbstractUnder certain conditions the reduced product space JX of a space X has the same homotopy type as ΩΣX, the loop-space on the suspension of X. Several proofs can be found in the literature. The original proof [6] made unnecessarily strong assumptions. Later, in the last chapter of [3], torn Dieck, Kamps and Puppe gave a proof under much weaker conditions and showed that they could not be further weakened. The question then arose as to whether the reduced product construction could be generalized to provide combinatorial models not only of ΩΣX but also of Ω2Σ2X, Ω3Σ3X and so on. This was answered in the affirmative by May [10], using ideas of Boardman and Vogt [1], and the construction was further developed by Segal [11] and others.The present note, however, is not concerned with these generalizations. Its purpose is to give a simple proof of the original result, without striving for maximum generality, and to show that the same method can be used to prove an equivariant version of the reduced product theorem and hence a fibrewise version. Fibrewise versions of the reduced product theorem have previously been given by Eggar [5] and, more recently, by one of us [8] but it may be useful to have a relatively simple treatment which is adequate for the majority of applications.