3

I have a question regarding something on the Bott-Tu's book "Differential Forms in Algebraic Topology". At page 109, near the end, there is the following example:

enter image description here

I don't manage to understand why the restriction $\rho_V^U$ is the identity. Furthermore, I have another edition of the same book, in which the last three lines are changed into:

"...if $V \subseteq U$ is an inclusion of contractible open sets, then $\rho_V^U$ is an isomorphism"

Please, someone could explain me what is the right version and why?

Thank you in advance.

Biagio
  • 393
  • 2
    Could you add the relevant details for those of us who don't have the reference handy? What is $\pi$? – Olivier Bégassat Nov 18 '14 at 16:31
  • Yes, of course! I apologies for that. I'll edit in a couple of minutes. – Biagio Nov 18 '14 at 16:34
  • Homotopic spaces have the same de Rham cohomology. Now $\pi^{-1}(U)\cong U\times F\sim F$ and $\pi^{-1}(V)=V\times F\sim F$. Then the restriction (i.e. the pullback of the identity) induces an isomorphism on the de Rham cohomology. It can't be the identity as the groups are isomorphic, but not the same. – Thomas Rot Nov 18 '14 at 17:30
  • Here is the point. I know that De Rham Cohomology is invariant under homotopic transformation, and consequently the cohomology of $\pi^{-1}U$ and $\pi^{-1}V$ are isomorphic. But why an isomorphism is given by the pullback of the identity? May you give me a reference, please? – Biagio Nov 18 '14 at 18:20

1 Answers1

1

I was going to write a comment: What Thomas Rot said plus "the pullback along the inclusion $V\times F\to U\times F$ commutes with the Künneth-isomorphism". This however deserves some explanations.

Note that

  1. We can choose an isomorphism $\varphi\colon \pi^{-1}U\to U\times F$ which is compatible with $\pi$. (More precisely, $\varphi$ shall factorise $\pi|_{\pi^{-1}U}$ over the canonical projection $U\times F\to U$.) In particular, under $\varphi$ the inclusion $\pi^{-1}V\subset\pi^{-1}U$ corresponds to $V\times F\subset U\times F$.

Thus, we can reduce the problem to the case where $\pi$ is the projection $U\times F\to U$.

  1. The inclusion $V\to U$ induces isomorphisms on cohomology groups, simply because if they're both contractible, all these groups are trivial except $H^0$, but this case is easy.

(I don't know what kind of cohomology you want to use; I've read De Rham somewhere, that's fine. I'm not going to use it explicitly anyway, but let's say we have coefficients in a field if you want to use something like singular cohomology instead.)

Now finally we can see that pull back is in fact an isomorphism. From the projections $U\times F \to U$ and $U\times F\to F$, we get homomorphisms $H^*(U)\to H^*(U\times F)$ and $ H^*(F)\to H^*(U\times F)$ respectively (and likewise for $V$). Using these, for each $k,l$ with $n = k+l$ we get a homomorphism $H^k(U)\otimes H^l(F)\to H^n(U\times F)$ and likewise for $V$ and it is easy to see that these maps make the diagram $$\require{AMScd} \begin{CD} H^k(V)\otimes H^l(F) @>>{i^*\otimes \mathrm{id}}> H^k(U)\otimes H^l(F)\\ @VVV @VVV \\ H^n(V\times F) @>{j^*}>> H^n(U\times F) \end{CD} $$ commute, where $i$ and $j$ are the canonical inclusions. By our second note, the above horizontal map is an isomorphism, and so is the sum of all of them, $$\bigoplus_{k+l = n}H^k(V)\otimes H^l(F) \to \bigoplus_{k+l = n}H^k(U)\otimes H^l(F).$$ (On both sides, all but one of the summands is trivial, where the non-trivial ones are $H^0(V)\otimes H^n(F)\cong H^n(F)\cong H^0(U)\otimes H^n(F)$.) To the very end, by the Künneth theorem, the vertical homomorphisms in the commutative diagram $$\require{AMScd} \begin{CD} \bigoplus_{k+l = n}H^k(V)\otimes H^l(F) @>{}>> \bigoplus_{k+l = n}H^k(U)\otimes H^l(F)\\ @VVV @VVV \\ H^n(V\times F) @>{}>> H^n(U\times F) \end{CD} $$ are also isomorphisms. Hence so is the bottom map and this is what we wanted to prove.

Ben
  • 6,117