On Homotopy Groups of Real Algebraic Varieties and their Complexifications

Let X ₀ be a topological component of a nonsingular real algebraic variety and i:X → X _C is a nonsingular projective complexification of X. In this paper, we will study the homomorphism on homotopy groups induced by the inclusion map i:X ₀ → X _C and obtain several results using rational homotopy theory and other standard tools of homotopy theory.     

On A(X) → TC(X) for some X

Let X be a connected based space and p be a two-regular prime number. If the fundamental group of X has order p, we compute the two-primary homotopy groups of the homotopy fiber of the trace map A(X) → TC(X) relating algebraic K-theory of spaces to topological cyclic homology. The proof uses a theorem of Dundas and an explicit calculation of the cyclotomic trace map K(ℤ[C_p])→ TC(ℤ[C_p]).     

Fundamental Classes in Algebraic Cobordism

We recall our construction of fundamental classes in the algebraic cobordism of smooth quasi-projective varieties, and show by example that it is not possible to extent this to fundamental classes, functorial for local complete intersection morphisms, for Cohen–Macaulay varieties.     

Rational isomorphisms between K-theories and cohomology theories

The well known isomorphism relating the rational algebraic K-theory groups and the rational motivic cohomology groups of a smooth variety over a field of characteristic 0 is shown to be realized by a map (the Segre map) of infinite loop spaces. Moreover, the associated Chern character map on rational homotopy groups is shown to be a ring isomorphism. A technique is introduced that establishes a useful general criterion for a natural transformation of functors on quasi-projective complex varieties to induce a homotopy equivalence of semi-topological singular complexes. Since semi-topological K-theory and morphic cohomology can be formulated as the semi-topological singular complexes associated to algebraic K-theory and motivic cohomology, this criterion provides a rational isomorphism between the semi-topological K-theory groups and the morphic cohomology groups of a smooth complex variety. Consequences include a Riemann-Roch theorem for the Chern character on semi-topological K-theory and an interpretation of the topological filtration on singular cohomology groups in K-theoretic terms.     

Vector bundles on a product of real cubic curves

In this paper we give a characterization of then-tuples (C ₁,...,C _n ) of nonsingular projective real cubic curves such that every topological complex vector bundle onC ₁×...×C _n admits an algebraic structure. The results are very explicit and can be expressed in an especially simple form for cubies defined over the rationals.The second author was supported by an NSF grant.     

Function Spaces and Continuous Algebraic Pairings for Varieties

Given a quasi-projective complex variety X and a projective variety Y, one may endow the set of morphisms, Mor(X, Y), from X to Y with the natural structure of a topological space. We introduce a convenient technique (namely, the notion of a functor on the category of 'smooth curves') for studying these function complexes and for forming continuous pairings of such. Building on this technique, we establish several results, including (1) the existence of cap and join product pairings in topological cycle theory; (2) the agreement of cup product and intersection product for topological cycle theory; (3) the agreement of the motivic cohomology cup product with morphic cohomology cup product; and (4) the Whitney sum formula for the Chern classes in morphic cohomology of vector bundles.     

Covering homology

We introduce the notion of covering homology of a commutative S-algebra with respect to certain families of coverings of topological spaces. The construction of covering homology is extracted from Bökstedt, Hsiang and Madsen's topological cyclic homology. In fact covering homology with respect to the family of orientation preserving isogenies of the circle is equal to topological cyclic homology. Our basic tool for the analysis of covering homology is a cofibration sequence involving homotopy orbits and a restriction map similar to the restriction map used in Bökstedt, Hsiang and Madsen's construction of topological cyclic homology.Covering homology with respect to families of isogenies of a torus is constructed from iterated topological Hochschild homology. It receives a trace map from iterated algebraic K-theory and there is a hope that the rich structure, and the calculability of covering homology will make it useful in the exploration of J. Rognes' “red shift conjecture”.     

Higher Intersection Theory on Algebraic Stacks: I

In this paper and the sequel we establish a theory of Chow groups and higher Chow groups on algebraic stacks locally of finite type over a field and establish their basic properties. This includes algebraic stacks in the sense of Deligne–Mumford as well as Artin. An intrinsic difference between our approach and earlier approaches is that the higher Chow groups of Bloch enter into our theory early on and depends heavily on his fundamental work. Our theory may be more appropriately called the (Lichtenbaum) motivic homology and cohomology of algebraic stacks. One of the main themes of these papers is that such a motivic homology does provide a reasonable intersection theory for algebraic stacks (of finite type over a field), with several key properties holding integrally and extending to stacks locally of finite type. While several important properties of our higher Chow groups, like covariance for projective representable maps (that factor as the composition of a closed immersion into the projective space associated to a locally free coherent sheaf and the obvious projection), an intersection pairing and contravariant functoriality for all smooth algebraic stacks, are shown to hold integrally, our theory works best with rational coefficients.The main results of Part I are the following. The higher Chow groups are defined in general with respect to an atlas, but are shown to be independent of the choice of the atlas for smooth stacks if one uses finite coefficients with torsion prime to the characteristics or in general for Deligne–Mumford stacks. (Using some results on motivic cohomology, we extend this integrally to all smooth algebraic stacks in Part II.) Using cohomological descent, we extend Bloch's fundamental localization sequence for quasi-projective schemes to long exact localization sequences of the higher Chow groups modulo torsion for all Artin stacks: this is one of the main results of the paper. We show that these higher Chow groups modulo torsion are covariant for all proper representable maps between stacks of finite type while being contravariant for all representable flat maps and, in Part II, that they are independent of the choice of an atlas for all stacks of finite type over the given field k. The comparison with motivic cohomology, as is worked out in Part II, enables us to provide an explicit comparison of our theory for quotient stacks associated to actions of linear algebraic groups on quasi-projective schemes with the corresponding Totaro–Edidin–Graham equivariant intersection theory. As an application of our theory we compute the higher Chow groups of Deligne–Mumford stacks and show that they are isomorphic modulo torsion to the higher Chow groups of their coarse moduli spaces. As a by-product of our theory we also produce localization sequences in (integral) higher Chow groups for all schemes locally of finite type over a field: these higher Chow groups are defined as the Zariski hypercohomology with respect to the cycle complex.     

Semi-Topological K-Homology and Thomason's Theorem

In this paper, we introduce the 'semi-topological K-homology' of complex varieties, a theory related to semi-topological K-theory much as connective topological K-homology is related to connective topological K-theory. Our main theorem is that the semi-topological K-homology of a smooth, quasi-projective complex variety Y coincides with the connective topological K-homology of the associated analytic space Y ^an. From this result, we deduce a pair of results relating semi-topological K-theory with connective topological K-theory. In particular, we prove that the 'Bott inverted' semi-topological K-theory of a smooth, projective complex variety X coincides with the topological K-theory of X ^an. In combination with a result of Friedlander and the author, this gives a new proof, in the special case of smooth, projective complex varieties, of Thomason's celebrated theorem that 'Bott inverted' algebraic K-theory with /n coefficients coincides with topological K-theory with /n coefficients.     

The homotopy limit problem for Hermitian K-theory, equivariant motivic homotopy theory and motivic Real cobordism

The homotopy limit problem for Karoubi?s Hermitian K-theory (Karoubi, 1980) [26] was posed by Thomason (1983) [44]. There is a canonical map from algebraic Hermitian K-theory to the Z/2-homotopy fixed points of algebraic K-theory. The problem asks, roughly, how close this map is to being an isomorphism, specifically after completion at 2. In this paper, we solve this problem completely for fields of characteristic 0 (Theorems 16, 20). We show that the 2-completed map is an isomorphism for fields F of characteristic 0 which satisfy cd₂(F[i])<∞, but not in general.     

Compact Kähler quotients of algebraic varieties and Geometric Invariant Theory

Given an action of a complex reductive Lie group G on a normal variety X, we show that every analytically Zariski-open subset of X admitting an analytic Hilbert quotient with projective quotient space is given as the set of semistable points with respect to some G-linearised Weil divisor on X. Applying this result to Hamiltonian actions on algebraic varieties, we prove that semistability with respect to a momentum map is equivalent to GIT-semistability in the sense of Mumford and Hausen. It follows that the number of compact momentum map quotients of a given algebraic Hamiltonian G-variety is finite. As further corollary we derive a projectivity criterion for varieties with compact Kähler quotient.     

On K1 and K2 of Algebraic Surfaces

In this paper we study higher Chow groups of smooth, projective surfaces over a field k of characteristic zero, using some new Hodge theoretic methods which we develop for this purpose. In particular we investigate the subgroup of CH ^r+1 (X,r) with r = 1,2 consisting of cycles that are supported over a normal crossing divisor Z on X. In this case, the Hodge theory of the complement forms an interesting variation of mixed Hodge structures in any geometric deformation of the situation. Our main result is a structure theorem in the case where X is a very general hypersurface of degree d in projective 3-space for d sufficiently large and Z is a union of very general hypersurface sections of X. In this case we show that the subgroup of CH ^r+1 (X,r) we consider is generated by obvious cycles only arising from rational functions on X with poles along Z. This can be seen as a generalization of the Noether–Lefschetz theorem for r = 0. In the case r = 1 there is a similar generalization by Müller-Stach, but our result is more precise than it, since it is geometric and not only cohomological. The case r = 2 is entirely new and original in this paper. For small d, we construct some explicit examples for r = 1 and 2 where the corresponding higher Chow groups are indecomposable, i.e. not the image of certain products of lower order groups. In an appendix Alberto Collino constructs even more indecomposable examples in CH ³ (X,2) which move in a one-dimensional family on the surface X.Contribution to appendix.     

Microlocal study of topological Radon transforms and real projective duality

Various topological properties of projective duality between real projective varieties and their duals are obtained by making use of the microlocal theory of (subanalytically) constructible sheaves developed by Kashiwara [M. Kashiwara, Index theorem for constructible sheaves, Astérisque 130 (1985) 193-209] and Kashiwara-Schapira [M. Kashiwara, P. Schapira, Sheaves on Manifolds, Grundlehren Math. Wiss., vol. 292, Springer, Berlin-Heidelberg-New York, 1990]. In particular, we prove in the real setting some results similar to the ones proved by Ernström in the complex case [L. Ernström, Topological Radon transforms and the local Euler obstruction, Duke Math. J. 76 (1994) 1-21]. For this purpose, we describe the characteristic cycles of topological Radon transforms of constructible functions in terms of curvatures of strata in real projective spaces.     

Fundamental groups of algebraic fiber spaces

Let be a dominant morphism, where E and B are smooth irreducible complex quasi-projective varieties. Suppose that the general fiber of $f$ is connected. We present an algebro-geometric condition under which the boundary homomorphism is well-defined, and makes the sequence exact. As an application, we calculate the fundamental group of the complement to the dual hypersurface of a smooth projective curve. Received: October 3, 2001     

Quasi-projective reduction of toric varieties

We define a quasi–projective reduction of a complex algebraic variety X to be a regular map from X to a quasi–projective variety that is universal with respect to regular maps from X to quasi–projective varieties. A toric quasi–projective reduction is the analogous notion in the category of toric varieties. For a given toric variety X we first construct a toric quasi–projective reduction. Then we show that X has a quasi–projective reduction if and only if its toric quasi–projective reduction is surjective. We apply this result to characterize when the action of a subtorus on a quasi–projective toric variety admits a categorical quotient in the category of quasi–projective varieties. Received October 29, 1998; in final form December 28, 1998     

New examples (and counterexamples) of complete finite-rank differential varieties

Differential algebraic geometry seeks to extend the results of its algebraic counterpart to objects defined by differential equations. Many notions, such as that of a projective algebraic variety, have close differential analogues but their behavior can vary in interesting ways. Workers in both differential algebra and model theory have investigated the property of completeness of differential varieties. After reviewing their results, we extend that work by proving several versions of a “differential valuative criterion" and using them to give new examples of complete differential varieties. We conclude by analyzing the first examples of incomplete, finite-rank projective differential varieties, demonstrating a clear difference from projective algebraic varieties.     

Algebraic and real K-theory of Real varieties

An algebraic variety defined over the real numbers has an associated topological space with involution, and algebraic vector bundles give rise to Real vector bundles. We show that the associated map from algebraic K-theory to Atiyah's Real K-theory is, after completion at two, an isomorphism on homotopy groups above the dimension of the variety.     

Techniques,computations, and conjectures for semi-topological <Emphasis Type="Italic">K</Emphasis>-theory

We establish the existence of an Atiyah-Hirzebruch-like spectral sequence relating the morphic cohomology groups of a smooth, quasi-projective complex variety to its semi-topological K-groups. This spectral sequence is compatible with (and, indeed, is built from) the motivic spectral sequence that relates the motivic cohomology and algebraic K-theory of varieties, and it is also compatible with the classical Atiyah-Hirzebruch spectral sequence in algebraic topology. In the second part of this paper, we use this spectral sequence in conjunction with another computational tool that we introduce — namely, a variation on the integral weight filtration of the Borel-Moore (singular) homology of complex varieties introduced by H. Gillet and C. Soulé – to compute the semi-topological K-theory of a large class of varieties. In particular, we prove that for curves, surfaces, toric varieties, projective rational three-folds, and related varieties, the semi-topological K-groups and topological K-groups are isomorphic in all degrees permitted by cohomological considerations. We also formulate integral conjectures relating semi-topological K-theory to topological K-theory analogous to more familiar conjectures (namely, the Quillen-Lichtenbaum and Beilinson-Lichtenbaum Conjectures) concerning mod-n algebraic K-theory and motivic cohomology. In particular, we prove a local vanishing result for morphic cohomology which enables us to formulate precisely a conjectural identification of morphic cohomology by A. Suslin. Our computations verify that these conjectures hold for the list of varieties above.Mathematics Subject Classification (2000): 19E20, 19E15, 14F43The first author was partially supported by the NSF and the NSAThe second author was supported by the Helen M. Galvin Fellowship of Northwestern UniversityThe third author was partially supported by the NSF and the NSA     

Holomorphic K-Theory, Algebraic Co-cycles, and Loop Groups

In this paper we study the holomorphic K-theory of a projective variety. This K-theory is defined in terms of the homotopy type of spaces of holomorphic maps from the variety to Grassmannians and loop groups. This theory is built out of studying algebraic bundles over a variety up to algebraic equivalence. In this paper we will give calculations of this theory for flag like varieties which include projective spaces, Grassmannians, flag manifolds, and more general homogeneous spaces, and also give a complete calculation for symmetric products of projective spaces. Using the algebraic geometric definition of the Chern character studied by the authors we will show that there is a rational isomorphism of graded rings between holomorphic K-theory and the appropriate morphic cohomology groups, in terms of algebraic co-cycles in the variety. In so doing we describe a geometric model for rational morphic cohomology groups in terms of the homotopy type of the space of algebraic maps from the variety to the symmetrized loop group U(n)/ _n where the symmetric group _n acts on U(n) via conjugation. This is equivalent to studying algebraic maps to the quotient of the infinite Grassmannians BU(k) by a similar symmetric group action. We then use the Chern character isomorphism to prove a conjecture of Friedlander and Walker stating that if one localizes holomorphic K-theory by inverting the Bott class, then rationally this is isomorphic to topological K-theory. Finally this will allows us to produce explicit obstructions to periodicity in holomorphic K-theory, and show that these obstructions vanish for generalized flag mani-folds.