On the kinematics of defects in the case of a fibred order-parameter space (Q1082648)

The aim of this paper is to describe in terms of homotopy theory the kinematics of three types of defects related to total space, base space and fibre in the case of a fibre bundle \(E\to B\). The basic fact presented here is that the study of defects related to the typical fibre V (called semidefects leads to the so-called kinematical group \(Kin^{\Gamma}(V,v_ 0)\) of the \(\Gamma\)-space V, where \(\Gamma\) is the structure group of the bundle and \(v_ 0\) is a base point. It is shown that of particular interest in applications is the case where \(\Gamma\) acts transitively on V.