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In mathematics, specifically in homotopy theory, a classifying space BG of a topological group G is the quotient of a weakly contractible space EG (i.e., a topological space all of whose homotopy groups are trivial) by a proper free action of G. It has the property that any G principal bundle over a paracompact manifold is isomorphic to a pullback of the principal bundle EG → BG. As explained later, this means that classifying spaces represent a set-valued functor on the of topological spaces.
In mathematics, a principal bundle is a mathematical object that formalizes some of the essential features of the Cartesian product of a space with a group . In the same way as with the Cartesian product, a principal bundle is equipped with An action of on , analogous to for a product space. A projection onto . For a product space, this is just the projection onto the first factor, . Unlike a product space, principal bundles lack a preferred choice of identity cross-section; they have no preferred analog of .
We investigate the theory of principal bundles from a homotopical point of view. In the first part of the thesis, we prove a classification of principal bundles over a fixed base space, dual to the we
In the first part of this paper, we propose a uniform interpretation of characteristic classes as obstructions to the reduction of the structure group and to the existence of an equivariant extension
Every principal G-bundle over X is classified up to equivalence by a homotopy class X -> BG, where BG is the classifying space of G. On the other hand, for every nice topological space X Milnor constr