Published online by Cambridge University Press: 24 October 2008
We define an unbased H-space to be a pair (A, m) where A is a space and
is a map such that the maps La: x → m(a, x), Ra: x → m(x, a) are homotopy equivalences for all a ∈ A. This is the same as James's definition of an H'-space in (3); we follow his notation as far as possible. (A, m) is homotopy-associative if the maps m(m × 1) and m(l × m) are homotopic. A left (right) a-inverse (a ∈ A) is a map w: A → A such that the composition m(w × 1) d (w(1 × w) d) is homotopic to ka, the constant map to a. d denotes the diagonal map a → (a, a).