Published online by Cambridge University Press: 24 October 2008
In an earlier paper [10], we constructed a ‘locally finite approximation away from a given prime p’ of the classifying space BG of a Lie group with finite component group. Such an approximation consists of a locally finite group g and a homotopy class of maps which in particular induces an isomorphism in cohomology with finite coefficients of order prime to p. The usefulness of such a construction is that it reduces various homotopy-theoretic questions concerning the space BG to the corresponding questions concerning Bπ for finite subgroups π. For example, we demonstrated in [10] how H. Miller's proof of the Sullivan conjecture concerning maps from , where π is a finite group and X is a finite-dimensional complex, can be extended to maps BG→X for G a Lie group with finite component group.