Fundamental Group - Universal Covering Space

Universal Covering Space

If X is a topological space that is path connected, locally path connected and locally simply connected, then it has a simply connected universal covering space on which the fundamental group π(X,x0) acts freely by deck transformations with quotient space X. This space can be constructed analogously to the fundamental group by taking pairs (x, γ), where x is a point in X and γ is a homotopy class of paths from x0 to x and the action of π(X, x0) is by concatenation of paths. It is uniquely determined as a covering space.

Read more about this topic:  Fundamental Group

Famous quotes containing the words universal, covering and/or space:

    Commercial jazz, soap opera, pulp fiction, comic strips, the movies set the images, mannerisms, standards, and aims of the urban masses. In one way or another, everyone is equal before these cultural machines; like technology itself, the mass media are nearly universal in their incidence and appeal. They are a kind of common denominator, a kind of scheme for pre-scheduled, mass emotions.
    C. Wright Mills (1916–62)

    You had to have seen the corpses lying there in front of the school—the men with their caps covering their faces—to know the meaning of class hatred and the spirit of revenge.
    Alfred Döblin (1878–1957)

    When my body leaves me
    I’m lonesome for it.
    but body
    goes away to I don’t know where
    and it’s lonesome to drift
    above the space it
    fills when it’s here.
    Denise Levertov (b. 1923)