Abelian Properties of Anick Spaces

Abstract

The Anick spaces play a key role in an unstable filtration of the stable homotopy of V(0) to produce secondary EHP sequences. This work establishes that the Anick spaces are homotopy associative and homotopy commutative H-spaces, and that they have a universal mapping property for maps into a homotopy commutative and homotopy associative H-space with a (necessary) condition on the growth of the p torsion. This is utilized to establish an unstable composition theory. The techniques involve generalized Whitehead products based on co-H spaces, calculations in a congruence category that lies between the unstable category and the stable category, and a controlled version of the extension theorem for principal fibrations.