On the James and Hilton-Milnor splittings, and the metastable EHP sequence

Abstract

This note provides modern proofs of some classical results in algebraic topology, such as the James Splitting, the Hilton–Milnor Splitting, and the metastable EHP sequence. We prove fundamental splitting results

and

in the maximal generality of an $\infty$-category with finite limits and pushouts in which pushouts squares remain pushouts after basechange along an arbitrary morphism (i.e., Mather's Second Cube Lemma holds). For connected objects, these imply the classical James and Hilton–Milnor splittings. Moreover, working in this generality shows that the James and Hilton–Milnor splittings hold in many new contexts, for example in: elementary $\infty$-topoi, profinite spaces, and motivic spaces over arbitrary base schemes. The splitting results in this last context extend Wickelgren and Williams' splitting result for motivic spaces over a perfect field [K. Wickelgren and B. Williams, Geom. Topol. 23, No. 4, 1691–1777 (2019; Zbl 1428.14032)]. We also give two proofs of the metastable EHP sequence in the setting of $\infty$-topoi: the first is a new, non-computational proof that only utilizes basic connectedness estimates involving the James filtration and the Blakers–Massey Theorem, while the second reduces to the classical computational proof.