A new topology on the universal path space

We generalize Brazes' topology on the fundamental group to the whole universal path space (X) over tilde, i.e., to the set of homotopy classes of all based paths. We develop basic properties of the new notion and provide a complete comparison of the obtained topology with the established topologies, in particular with the Lasso topology and the CO topology, i.e., the topology that is induced by the compact-open topology. It turns out that the new topology is the finest topology contained in the CO topology, for which the action of the fundamental group on the universal path space is a continuous group action. (C) 2017 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.