The Fundamental Group of the Circle

Arthur Freitas Ramos 📧, David Barros Hulak 📧 and Ruy Jose Guerra Barretto de Queiroz 📧

July 2, 2026

This is a development version of this entry. It might change over time and is not stable. Please refer to release versions for citations.

Abstract

We formalise the classical theorem of algebraic topology that the fundamental group of the circle is isomorphic to the additive group of the integers, $\pi_1(S^1) \cong \mathbb{Z}$. The circle is modelled as the unit sphere in the complex plane with basepoint $1$, and the carrier of the fundamental group is the set of path-homotopy classes of loops based at $1$, with concatenation as the group operation. The group laws are obtained from the homotopy groupoid laws of the Isabelle Analysis library. The isomorphism with $\mathbb{Z}$ is given by the degree map, sending a homotopy class to the winding number about the origin of any representative loop. That this is a bijective group homomorphism follows from the winding-number classification of loops in the punctured plane, together with a radial retraction onto the circle. The entry is self-contained on top of the Isabelle distribution.

License

BSD License

Note

Opus 4.8 was used to help with proof engineering

Topics

Session Fundamental_Group_Circle