Representation stability for homotopy groups of configuration spaces

Abstract

We prove that the dual rational homotopy groups of the configuration spaces of a 1-connected manifold of dimension at least 3 are uniformly representation stable in the sense of Church, and that their derived dual integral homotopy groups are finitely-generated as FI-modules in the sense of Church-Ellenberg-Farb. This is a consequence of a more general theorem relating properties of the cohomology groups of a 1-connected co-FI-space to properties of its dual homotopy groups. We also discuss several other applications.