Mod 2 exterior H-spaces.
The -fold product of an arbitrary space usually supports only the obvious permutation action of the symmetric group . However, if is a -complete, homotopy associative, homotopy commutative -space one can define a homotopy action of on . In various cases, e.g. if multiplication by is null homotopic then we get a homotopy action of for some . After one suspension this allows one to split using idempotents of which can be lifted to . In fact all of this is possible if is an -space...
It is known that the order of all Postnikov k-invariants of an H-space of finite type is finite. This paper establishes the finiteness of the order of the k-invariants of X in dimensions m ≤ 2n if X is an (n-1)-connected H-space which is not necessarily of finite type (n ≥ 1). Similar results hold more generally for higher k-invariants if X is an iterated loop space. Moreover, we provide in all cases explicit universal upper bounds for the order of the k-invariants of X.