Twisted homological stability for configuration spaces

Martin Palmer

Published 2013-08-20, updated 2014-12-17Version 2

Let M be an open, connected manifold. A classical theorem of McDuff and Segal states that the sequence of configuration spaces of n unordered, distinct points in M is homologically stable with coefficients in Z: in each degree, the integral homology is eventually independent of n. The purpose of this note is to prove that this phenomenon also holds for homology with twisted coefficients. We first define an appropriate notion of finite-degree twisted coefficient system for configuration spaces and then use a spectral sequence argument to deduce the result from the untwisted homological stability result of McDuff and Segal. The result and the methods are generalisations of those of Betley for the symmetric groups.