MathOverflow Asked by Omar Antolín-Camarena on November 3, 2021
For a (discrete) monoid $M$, the classifying space $BM$ is the
geometric realization of the nerve of the one object category whose
hom-set is $M$. (This definition gives the usual classfiying space
when $M$ is a group.) The group completion of $M$ can be constructed
as the fundamental group of $BM$, and is characterized by the
universal property that any monoid homomorphism from $M$ to a group
factors uniquely through the group completion.
My question is whether there is an example of a monoid for which the
canonical map to its group completion is injective, but for which this
canonical map does not induce a homotopy equivalence of the
classifying spaces.
As background here are some facts:
Classifying spaces of monoids produce all connected homotopy types!
This is proved in Dusa McDuff’s 1979 paper On the classifying spaces
of discrete monoids. For a neat concrete example, see Zbigniew
Fiedorowicz’s A counterexample to a group completion conjecture of
JC Moore; it shows a specific 5
element monoid whose classifying space is homotopy equivalent to $S^2$.
If $G$ is the group completion of a commutative monoid $M$, the
canonical map $BM to BG$ is a homotopy equivalence; even if $M to G$
is not injective. (This is easy to prove: think of $M to G$ as a
functor between one object categories and apply Quillen’s Theorem A to
it. There is only one slice category to check and using commutativity
it is easy to see this category is filtered and thus contractible.)
If $M$ is a free monoid and the free group $G$ is its completion,
the map $BM to BG$ is a homotopy equivalence. It fact, more
generally, if $C$ is the free category on some directed graph $X$, the
nerve of $C$ is homotopy equivalent to the geometric realization of
$X$. This is proved in Dwyer and Kan’s Simplical Localization of
Categories,
proposition 2.9, but the proof is simple enough to sketch here: for
each $k$, the inclusion of the $k$-skeletion of $NC$ into the
$(k+1)$-skeleton is a weak homotopy equivalence (since you get the
$(k+1)$-skeleton by filling in some horns); so the $1$-skeleton,
$X$, is weakly equivalent to $NC$. (The claim for free monoids is
the case where $X$ consists of a single vertex with some loops.)
Even if a monoid has left and right cancellation the canonical map
to its group completion might not be injective. Here’s an example from
Malcev’s On the Immersion of an Algebraic Ring into a Field: let $M$
be the monoid presented by $(a,b,c,d,x,y,u,v : ax=by, cx=dy,
au=bv)$. Malcev shows that $M$ is cancellative, but that in $M$, $cu
neq dv$; in any group the relations listed for $M$ would imply that
$cu=dv$.
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