Functor from fundamental groupoid to groups is full/faithful

algebraic-topologycategory-theoryfundamental-groupshomotopy-theory

Let $X$ be a topological space. Consider the following functor $\tilde{(-)}: \Pi_{\leq 1} \rightarrow \mathbf{Grp}$ from the fundamental groupoid of $X$ to the category of groups, defined by $x_0 \mapsto \pi_1 (X, x_0)$ and $(\alpha: x_0 \rightsquigarrow y_0) \mapsto (\tilde{\alpha}: \pi_1 (X, x_0) \rightarrow \pi_1 (Y, y_0))$ defined by $\tilde{\alpha}[\gamma] = [\alpha^{-1} \ast \gamma \ast \alpha]$. Here $x_0 \rightsquigarrow y_0$ denotes a path in $X$ from $x_0$ to $y_0$.

One can show that this is indeed a functor. My question is whether it is full and/or faithful.

Faithful: Let $\tilde{\alpha} = \tilde{\beta}$ i.e. $\forall \gamma \in \pi_1(X,x_0)$ we have

$$ [\alpha^{-1} \ast \gamma \ast \alpha] = [\beta^{-1} \ast \gamma \ast \beta]$$

Does this imply that $\alpha$ and $\beta$ are path homotopic?

Full: Does there exists a homomorhism $\phi: \pi_1 (X, x_0) \rightarrow \pi_1 (X, y_0)$ s.t. $\phi$ is not equal to $\tilde{\alpha}$ for any $\alpha: x_0 \rightsquigarrow y_0$?

I feel like both of the questions are rather easy to answer, but I cannot seem to get a grip. I feel like the functor is neither full nor faithful, but I have not been able to come up with a counter example. Any kind of comments/tips/references are very much appreciated. Thank you very much in advance.

Best Answer

It is trivially not full in general--for instance, since $\Pi_{\leq 1}$ is a groupoid, every morphism in the image of the functor must be an isomorphism. Or, for instance, if $x,y\in X$ are in different path-components, then there are no morphisms from $x$ to $y$ in $\Pi_{\leq 1}$ but there is always at least the trivial homomorphism between $\pi_1(X,x)$ and $\pi_1(X,y)$. Even if you restrict the target category to have only isomorphisms as the morphisms, it is not full: for instance, every morphism from a point $x$ to itself gets sent to an inner automorphism of the group $\pi_1(X,x)$, so if $\pi_1(X,x)$ has outer automorphisms, the functor will not be full.

Slightly less trivially, it is not faithful in general. For instance, a path from a point $x$ to itself gets sent to the inner automorphism of $\pi_1(X,x)$ given by conjugation by that path. In particular, if $\pi_1(X,x)$ is abelian, then all such paths get sent to the identity map.