In algebraic topology, a discipline within mathematics, the acyclic models theorem can be used to show that two homology theories are isomorphic. The theorem was developed by topologists Samuel Eilenberg and Saunders MacLane. They discovered that, when topologists were writing proofs to establish equivalence of various homology theories, there were numerous similarities in the processes. Eilenberg and MacLane then discovered the theorem to generalize this process. It can be used to prove the Eilenberg–Zilber theorem; this leads to the idea of the model category.
In particular the chain map is unique up to natural chain homotopy.
Generalizations
Projective and acyclic complexes
What is above is one of the earliest versions of the theorem. Another version is the one that says that if is a complex of projectives in an abelian category and is an acyclic complex in that category, then any map extends to a chain map, unique up to homotopy. This specializes almost to the above theorem if one uses the functor category as the abelian category. Free functors are projective objects in that category. The morphisms in the functor category are natural transformations, so the constructed chain maps and homotopies are all natural. The difference is that in the above version, being acyclic is a stronger assumption than being acyclic only at certain objects. On the other hand, the above version almost implies this version by letting a category with only one object. Then the free functor is basically just a free module. being acyclic at the models means nothing else than that the complex is acyclic.
Acyclic classes
There is a grand theorem that unifies both of the above. Let be an abelian category. A class of chain complexes over will be called an acyclic class provided that:
If is a double complex, all of whose rows are in, then the total complex of belongs to.
There are three natural examples of acyclic classes, although doubtless others exist. The first is that of homotopy contractible complexes. The second is that of acyclic complexes. In functor categories, there is a class of complexes that are contractible on each object, but where the contractions might not be given by natural transformations. Another example is again in functor categories but this time the complexes are acyclic only at certain objects. Let denote the class of chain maps between complexes whose mapping cone belongs to. Although does not necessarily have a calculus of either right or left fractions, it has weaker properties of having homotopy classes of both left and right fractions that permit forming the class gotten by inverting the arrows in. Let be an augmented endofunctor on, meaning there is given a natural transformation . We say that the chain complex is -presentable if for each, the chain complex belongs to. The boundary operator is given by We say that the chain complex functor is -acyclic if the augmented chain complex belongs to. Theorem. ''Let be an acyclic class and the corresponding class of arrows in the category of chain complexes. Suppose that is -presentable and is -acyclic. Then any natural transformation extends, in the category to a natural transformation of chain functors and this is unique in up to chain homotopies. If we suppose, in addition, that is -presentable, that is -acyclic, and that is an isomorphism, then is homotopy equivalence.
Example
Here is an example of this last theorem in action. Let be the category of triangulable spaces and be the category of abelian group valued functors on. Let be the singular chain complex functor and be the simplicial chain complex functor. Let be the functor that assigns to each space the space Here, is the -simplex and this functor assigns to the sum of as many copies of each -simplex as there are maps. Then let be defined by. There is an obvious augmentation and this induces one on. It can be shown that both and are both -presentable and -acyclic. The class is the class of homology equivalences. It is rather obvious that and so we conclude that singular and simplicial homology are isomorphic on. There are many other examples in both algebra and topology, some of which are described in
