Algebraic & Geometric Topology 8 (2008) 173–210

DOI: 10.2140/agt.2008.8.173

Abstract

We study spaces of natural transformations between homogeneous functors in Goodwillie’s calculus of homotopy functors and in Weiss’s orthogonal calculus. We give a description of such spaces of natural transformations in terms of the homotopy fixed point construction. Our main application uses this description in combination with the Segal Conjecture to obtain a delooping theorem for connecting maps in the Goodwillie tower of the identity and in the Weiss tower of BU(V ). The interest in such deloopings stems from conjectures made by the first and the third author [Filtered spectra arising from permutative categories, J. Reine Angew. Math. 604 (2007) 73-136] that these towers provide a source of contracting homotopies for certain projective chain complexes of spectra.

Keywords

derived natural transformations, Whitehead Conjecture, homotopy calculus, orthogonal calculus, homogeneous functors, delooping, Segal Conjecture

Mathematical Subject Classification

Primary: 55P65

Secondary: 18G55, 55P47

References

Publication

Received: 24 April 2007
Revised: 30 November 2007
Accepted: 19 December 2007
Published: 8 February 2008

Authors