Schematic homotopy types and non-abelian Hodge theory

Abstract

AbstractWe use Hodge theoretic methods to study homotopy types of complex projective manifolds with arbitrary fundamental groups. The main tool we use is the schematization functor$X \mapsto (X\otimes \mathbb {C})^{\mathrm {sch}}$, introduced by the third author as a substitute for the rationalization functor in homotopy theory in the case of non-simply connected spaces. Our main result is the construction of a Hodge decomposition on $(X\otimes \mathbb {C})^{\mathrm {sch}}$. This Hodge decomposition is encoded in an action of the discrete group $\mathbb {C}^{\times \delta }$ on the object $(X\otimes \mathbb {C})^{\mathrm {sch}}$ and is shown to recover the usual Hodge decomposition on cohomology, the Hodge filtration on the pro-algebraic fundamental group, and, in the simply connected case, the Hodge decomposition on the complexified homotopy groups. We show that our Hodge decomposition satisfies a purity property with respect to a weight filtration, generalizing the fact that the higher homotopy groups of a simply connected projective manifold have natural mixed Hodge structures. As applications we construct new examples of homotopy types which are not realizable as complex projective manifolds and we prove a formality theorem for the schematization of a complex projective manifold.