Occupants in manifolds

Abstract

Let K be a subset of a smooth manifold M. In some cases functor calculus methods lead to a homotopical formula for M minus K in terms of the subspaces M minus S, where S runs through the finite subsets of K.

There is a sequel to this paper: title "Configuration categories and homotopy automorphisms". v2: some typos corrected, v3: some errors in section 1 corrected. v4: more errors corrected and therefore number of authors increased from 1 to 2. v5: more errors corrected especially in section 3. v6: just a few typos corrected and pointers added