Change of fiber

Given a fibration p:E→B, the change of fiber is a map between the fibers induced by paths in B.

Since a covering is a fibration, the construction generalizes the corresponding facts in the theory of covering spaces.

Definition

If β is a path in B that starts at, say, b, then we have the homotopy $h:p^{-1}(b)\times I\to I{\overset {\beta }{\to }}B$ where the first map is a projection. Since p is a fibration, by the homotopy lifting property, h lifts to a homotopy $g:p^{-1}(b)\times I\to E$ with $g_{0}:p^{-1}(b)\hookrightarrow E$. We have:

$g_{t}:p^{-1}(b)\to p^{-1}(\beta (t))$.

(There might be an ambiguity and so $\beta \mapsto g_{1}$ need not be well-defined.) Let $\operatorname {Pc} (B)$ denotes the set of path classes in B. We claim that the construction determines the map:

$\tau :\operatorname {Pc} (B)\to$ the set of homotopy classes of maps.

Suppose β, β' are in the same path class; thus, there is a homotopy h from β to β'. Let

$K=I\times \{0,1\}\cup \{0\}\times I\subset I^{2}$.

Drawing a picture, there is a homeomorphism $I^{2}\to I^{2}$ that restricts to a homeomorphism $K\to I\times \{0\}$. Let $f:p^{-1}(b)\times K\to E$ be such that $f(x,s,0)=g(x,s)$, $f(x,s,1)=g'(x,s)$ and $f(x,0,t)=x$.

Then, by the homotopy lifting property, we can lift the homotopy $p^{-1}(b)\times I^{2}\to I^{2}{\overset {h}{\to }}B$ to ${\widetilde {h}}$ such that ${\widetilde {h}}$ restricts to $f$. In particular, we have $g_{1}\sim g_{1}'$, establishing the claim.

It is clear from the construction that the map is a homomorphism: if $\gamma (1)=\beta (0)$,

$\tau ([\beta ]\cdot [\gamma ])=\tau ([\beta ])\circ \tau ([\gamma ])$

Consequence

One can get a substitute for a structure group. Indeed, suppose B is path-connected. Then