Integral chains and Bousfield-Kan completion

Abstract

Working in the Arone-Ching framework for homotopical descent, it follows that the Bousfield-Kan completion map with respect to integral homology is the unit of a derived adjunction. We prove that this derived adjunction, comparing spaces with coalgebra complexes over the associated integral homology comonad, via integral chains, can be turned into a derived equivalence by replacing spaces with the full subcategory of simply connected spaces. In particular, this provides an integral chains characterization of the homotopy type of simply connected spaces.

28 pages, final preprint version. arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:1502.06944, arXiv:1612.08622, arXiv:1612.08623