Permutation products and their various ``fat diagonal'' subspaces are studied from the topological and geometric point of view. We describe in detail the stabilizer and orbit stratifications related to the permutation action, producing a sharp upper bound for its depth and then paying particular attention to the geometry of the diagonal stratum. We write down an expression for the fundamental group of any permutation product of a connected space $X$ having the homotopy type of a CW complex in terms of $\pi_1(X)$ and $H_1(X;\mathbb{Z})$. We then prove that the fundamental group of the configuration space of $n$-points on $X$, of which multiplicities do not exceed $n/2$, coincides with $H_1(X;\mathbb{Z})$. Further results consist in giving conditions for when fat diagonal subspaces of manifolds can be manifolds again. Various examples and homological calculations are included.

We show that higher order invariants of smooth functions can be written as linear combinations of full invariants times iterated integrals. The non-uniqueness of such a presentation is captured in the kernel of the ensuing map from the tensor product. This kernel is computed explicitly. As a consequence, it turns out that higher order invariants are a free module of the algebra of full invariants.

This paper gives a characterization of homotopy fibres of inverse image maps on groupoids of torsors that are induced by geometric morphisms, in terms of both pointed torsors and pointed cocycles, suitably defined. Cocycle techniques are used to give a complete description of such fibres, when the underlying geometric morphism is the canonical stalk on the classifying topos of a profinite group $G$. If the torsors in question are defined with respect to a constant group $H$, then the path components of the fibre can be identified with the set of continuous maps from the profinite group $G$ to the group $H$. More generally, when $H$ is not constant, this set of path components is the set of continuous maps from a pro-object in sheaves of groupoids to $H$, which pro-object can be viewed as a ``Grothendieck fundamental groupoid".

Generalized étale homotopy pro-groups $\pi_1^{\operatorname{ét}}(ċ{C}, x)$ associated with pointed, connected, small Grothendieck sites $(\mathcal{C}, x)$ are defined, and their relationship to Galois theory and the theory of pointed torsors for discrete groups is explained.
Applications include new rigorous proofs of some folklore results around $\pi_1^{\operatorname{ét}}(ét(X), x)$, a description of Grothendieck's short exact sequence for Galois descent in terms of pointed torsor trivializations, and a new étale van Kampen theorem that gives a simple statement about a pushout square of pro-groups that works for covering families that do not necessarily consist exclusively of monomorphisms. A corresponding van Kampen result for Grothendieck's profinite groups $\pi_1^{\mathrm{Gal}}$ immediately follows.

For $p$ a prime, a $p$-typical cover of a connected scheme on which $p=0$ is a finite \'etale cover whose monodromy group (\emph{i.e.,} the Galois group of its normal closure) is a $p$-group. The geometry of such covers exhibits some unexpectedly pleasant behaviors; building on work of Katz, we demonstrate some of these. These include a criterion for when a morphism induces an isomorphism of the $p$\nobreakdash-typi\-cal quotients of the \'etale fundamental groups, and a decomposition theorem for $p$-typical covers of polynomial rings over an algebraically closed field.

Let $f \colon E\to B$ be a dominant morphism, where $E$ and $B$ are smooth irreducible complex quasi-projective varieties, and let $F_b$ be the general fiber of $f$. We present conditions under which the homomorphism $\pi_1 (F_b)\to \pi_1 (E)$ induced by the inclusion is injective.

Let $\phi \colon X\to M$ be a morphism from a smooth irreducible complex quasi-projective variety $X$ to a Grassmannian variety $M$ such that the image is of dimension $\ge 2$. Let $D$ be a reduced hypersurface in $M$, and $\gamma$ a general linear automorphism of $M$. We show that, under a certain differential-geometric condition on $\phi(X)$ and $D$, the fundamental group $\pi_1 \bigl( (\gamma \circ \phi)^{-1} (M\setminus D) \bigr)$ is isomorphic to a central extension of $\pi_1 (M\setminus D) \times \pi_1 (X)$ by the cokernel of $\pi_2 (\phi) \colon \pi_2 (X) \to \pi_2 (M)$.