The group structure of the homotopy set whose target is the automorphism group of the Cuntz algebra

Abstract

We determine the group structure of the homotopy set whose target is the automorphism group of the Cuntz algebra $O_{n+1}$ for finite n in terms of K-theory. We show that there is an example of a space for which the homotopy set is a non-commutative group, and hence the classifying space of the automorphism group of the Cuntz algebra for finite n is not an H-space. We also make an improvement of Dadarlat's classification of continuous fields of the Cuntz algebras in terms of vector bundles.