Homotopy decomposition of a group of symplectomorphisms of S×S

We continue the analysis started by Abreu, McDuff and Anjos of the topology of the group of symplectomorphisms of S²×S² when the ratio of the area of the two spheres lies in the interval (1,2]. We express the group, up to homotopy, as the pushout (or amalgam) of certain of its compact Lie subgroups. We use this to compute the homotopy type of the classifying space of the group of symplectomorphisms and the corresponding ring of characteristic classes for symplectic fibrations.     

Classification of real Nash fibre bundles

Let G be a compact subgroup of an orthogonal group and X an affine, real, semialgebraic Nash variety. A principal Nash G-bundle over X is said to be strongly Nash if it is induced, up to Nash equivalences, of some universal bundle under a Nash map. Not all Nash bundles are strongly Nash and we denote by S(X, G) the class of strongly Nash G-bundles over X. The principal aim of this paper is to prove the following classification theorem: two bundles of S(X, G) are Nash equivalent if and only if they are topologically equivalent; more,there exists a bijection between the family of the classes of Nash equivalent bundles of S(X, G) and , where is the sheaf of germs of the continous maps from X to G. This result leads to find the largest class of principal Nash G-bundles over X in which the topological equivalence always implies the Nash one. Well, we prove that this class is exactly S(X, G). Research partially supported by M.I.U.R.     

Finite Abelian actions on surfaces

Edmonds showed that two free orientation preserving smooth actions φ₁ and φ₂ of a finite Abelian group G on a closed connected oriented smooth surface M are equivalent by an equivariant orientation preserving diffeomorphism iff they have the same bordism class [M,φ₁]=[M,φ₂] in the oriented bordism group Ω₂(G) of the group G. In this paper, we compute the bordism class [M,φ] for any such action of G on M and we determine for a given M, the bordism classes in Ω₂(G) that are representable by such actions of G on M. This will enable us to obtain a formula for the number of inequivalent such actions of G on M. We also determine the “weak” equivalence classes of such actions of G on M when all the p-Sylow subgroups of G are homocyclic (i.e. of the form n(Z/pαZ)).     

Real, complex and quaternionic equivariant vector fields on spheres

The equivariant real, complex and quaternionic vector fields on spheres problem is reduced to a question about the equivariant J-groups of the projective spaces. As an application of this reduction, we give a generalization of the results of Namboodiri [U. Namboodiri, Equivariant vector fields on spheres, Trans. Amer. Math. Soc. 278 (2) (1983) 431-460], on equivariant real vector fields, and Önder [T. Önder, Equivariant cross sections of complex Stiefel manifolds, Topology Appl. 109 (2001) 107-125], on equivariant complex vector fields, which avoids the restriction that the representation containing the sphere has enough orbit types.     

How tightly can you fold a sphere?

Consider a compact, connected Lie group G acting isometrically on a sphere Sn of radius 1. The quotient of Sn by this group action, Sn/G, has a natural metric on it, and so we may ask what are its diameter and q-extents. These values have been computed for cohomogeneity one actions on spheres. In this paper, we compute the diameters, extents, and several q-extents of cohomogeneity two orbit spaces resulting from such actions, and we also obtain results about the q-extents of Euclidean disks. Additionally, via a simple geometric criterion, we can identify which of these actions give rise to a decomposition of the sphere as a union of disk bundles. In addition, as a service to the reader, we give a complete breakdown of all the isotropy subgroups resulting from cohomogeneity one and two actions.     

Ganea and Whitehead definitions for the tangential Lusternik-Schnirelmann category of foliations

This work solves the problem of elaborating Ganea and Whitehead definitions for the tangential category of a foliated manifold. We develop these two notions in the category S-Top of stratified spaces, that are topological spaces X endowed with a partition F and compare them to a third invariant defined by using open sets. More precisely, these definitions apply to an element (X,F) of S-Top together with a class A of subsets of X; they are similar to invariants introduced by M. Clapp and D. Puppe.If (X,F)∈S-Top, we define a transverse subset as a subspace A of X such that the intersection S∩A is at most countable for any S∈F. Then we define the Whitehead and Ganea LS-categories of the stratified space by taking the infimum along the transverse subsets. When we have a closed manifold, endowed with a C¹-foliation, the three previous definitions, with A the class of transverse subsets, coincide with the tangential category and are homotopical invariants.     

Equivariant embedding theorems and topological index maps

The construction of topological index maps for equivariant families of Dirac operators requires factoring a general smooth map through maps of a very simple type: zero sections of vector bundles, open embeddings, and vector bundle projections. Roughly speaking, a normally non-singular map is a map together with such a factorisation. These factorisations are models for the topological index map. Under some assumptions concerning the existence of equivariant vector bundles, any smooth map admits a normal factorisation, and two such factorisations are unique up to a certain notion of equivalence. To prove this, we generalise the Mostow Embedding Theorem to spaces equipped with proper groupoid actions. We also discuss orientations of normally non-singular maps with respect to a cohomology theory and show that oriented normally non-singular maps induce wrong-way maps on the chosen cohomology theory. For K-oriented normally non-singular maps, we also get a functor to Kasparov's equivariant KK-theory. We interpret this functor as a topological index map.     

Characteristic classes and transversality

Let ξ be a smooth vector bundle over a differentiable manifold M. Let be a generic bundle morphism from the trivial bundle of rank n−i+1 to ξ. We give a geometric construction of the Stiefel-Whitney classes when ξ is a real vector bundle, and of the Chern classes when ξ is a complex vector bundle. Using h we define a differentiable closed manifold and a map whose image is the singular set of h. The ith characteristic class of ξ is the Poincaré dual of the image, under the homomorphism induced in homology by ?, of the fundamental class of the manifold . We extend this definition for vector bundles over a paracompact space, using that the universal bundle is filtered by smooth vector bundles.     

The genus and the category of configuration spaces

In this paper configuration spaces of smooth manifolds are considered. The accent is made on actions of certain groups (mostly p-tori) on this spaces by permuting their points. For such spaces the cohomological index, the genus in the sense of Krasnosel'skii-Schwarz, and the equivariant Lyusternik-Schnirelmann category are estimated from below, and some corollaries for functions on configuration spaces are deduced.     

A stable approach to the equivariant Hopf theorem

Let G be a finite group. For semi-free G-manifolds which are oriented in the sense of Waner [S. Waner, Equivariant RO(G)-graded bordism theories, Topology and its Applications 17 (1984) 1-26], the homotopy classes of G-equivariant maps into a G-sphere are described in terms of their degrees, and the degrees occurring are characterised in terms of congruences. This is first shown to be a stable problem, and then solved using methods of equivariant stable homotopy theory with respect to a semi-free G-universe.     

Embeddings of homology equivalent manifolds with boundary

We prove a theorem on equivariant maps implying the following two corollaries:(1) Let N and M be compact orientable n-manifolds with boundaries such that M⊂N, the inclusion M→N induces an isomorphism in integral cohomology, both M and N have (n−d−1)-dimensional spines and . Then the restriction-induced map Embm(N)→Embm(M) is bijective. Here Embm(X) is the set of embeddings X→Rm up to isotopy (in the PL or smooth category).(2) For a 3-manifold N with boundary whose integral homology groups are trivial and such that N?D³ (or for its special 2-spine N) there exists an equivariant map , although N does not embed into R³.The second corollary completes the answer to the following question: for which pairs (m,n) for each n-polyhedron N the existence of an equivariant map implies embeddability of N into Rm? An answer was known for each pair (m,n) except (3,3) and (3,2).     

Homotopy type of gauge groups of quaternionic line bundles over spheres

Let P be a principal S³-bundle over a sphere Sn, with n?4. Let GP be the gauge group of P. The homotopy type of GP when n=4 was studied by A. Kono in [A. Kono, A note on the homotopy type of certain gauge groups, Proc. Roy. Soc. Edinburgh Sect. A 117 (1991) 295-297]. In this paper we extend his result and we study the homotopy type of the gauge group of these bundles for all n?25.     

Bredon homology and ramified covering G-maps

Let G be a finite group. The objective of this paper is twofold. First we prove that the cellular Bredon homology groups with coefficients in an arbitrary coefficient system M are isomorphic to the homotopy groups of certain topological abelian group. And second, we study ramified covering G-maps of simplicial sets and of simplicial complexes. As an application, we construct a transfer for them in Bredon homology, when M is a Mackey functor. We also show that the Bredon-Illman homology with coefficients in M satisfies the equivariant weak homotopy equivalence axiom in the category of G-spaces.     

Three-dimensional Lie group actions on compact (4n+3)-dimensional geometric manifolds

The (4n+3)-dimensional sphere S⁴ⁿ⁺³ can be viewed as the boundary of the quaternionic hyperbolic space and the group PSp(n+1,1) of quaternionic hyperbolic isometries extends to a real analytic transitive action on S⁴ⁿ⁺³. We call the pair (PSp(n+1,1),S⁴ⁿ⁺³) a spherical Q C-C geometry. A manifold M locally modelled on this geometry is said to be a spherical Q C-C manifold. We shall classify all pairs (G,M) where G is a three-dimensional connected Lie group which acts smoothly and almost freely on a compact spherical Q C-C manifold M, preserving the geometric structure. As an application, we shall determine all compact 3-pseudo-Sasakian manifolds admitting spherical Q C-C structures.     

Generalized Dirichlet to Neumann operator on invariant differential forms and equivariant cohomology

In recent work, Belishev and Sharafutdinov show that the generalized Dirichlet to Neumann (DN) operator Λ on a compact Riemannian manifold M with boundary ∂M determines de Rham cohomology groups of M. In this paper, we suppose G is a torus acting by isometries on M. Given X in the Lie algebra of G and the corresponding vector field XM on M, Witten defines an inhomogeneous coboundary operator dXM=d+ιXM on invariant forms on M. The main purpose is to adapt Belishev-Sharafutdinov?s boundary data to invariant forms in terms of the operator dXM in order to investigate to what extent the equivariant topology of a manifold is determined by the corresponding variant of the DN map. We define an operator ΛXM on invariant forms on the boundary which we call the XM-DN map and using this we recover the XM-cohomology groups from the generalized boundary data (∂M,ΛXM). This shows that for a Zariski-open subset of the Lie algebra, ΛXM determines the free part of the relative and absolute equivariant cohomology groups of M. In addition, we partially determine the ring structure of XM-cohomology groups from ΛXM. These results explain to what extent the equivariant topology of the manifold in question is determined by ΛXM.     

Dimensions of fixed point sets of involutions

Suppose the fixed point set F of a smooth involution T:M → M on a smooth, closed and connected manifold M decomposes into two components Fⁿ and F² of dimensions n and 2, respectively, with n > 2 odd. We show that the codimension k of Fⁿ is small if the normal bundle of F² does not bound; specifically, we show that k≦ 3 in this case. In the more general situation where F is not a boundary, n (not necessarily odd) is the dimension of a component of F of maximal dimension and k is the codimension of this component, and fixed components of all dimensions j, 0≦ j≦ n, may occur, a theorem of Boardman gives that . In addition, we show that this bound can be improved to k≦ 1 (hence k = 1) for some specific values of n and some fixed stable cobordism classes of the normal bundle of F² in M; further, we determine in these cases the equivariant cobordism class of (M, T). Received: 25 August 2005     

A note on the volume flux group of four-manifolds

We show that closed orientable smooth four-manifolds with non-trivial volume flux group and fundamental group of subexponential growth type are finitely covered by a manifold homeomorphic to S³×S¹, S²×T² or a nil-manifold. We also show that if a compact complex surface has non-trivial volume flux group then it has zero minimal volume.     

Cyclic actions on some Klein bottle bundles over S1

Leth be a cyclic action of periodn onM, whereM is eitherS ¹×K, K is the Klein bottle or on , the twisted Klein bottle bundle overS ¹, such that there is a fiberingq:MS ¹ with fiber a Klein bottleK or a torusT with respect to which the action is fiber preserving. We classify all such actions and show that they might be distinguished by their fixed points or by their orbit spaces.     

On trivialities of Stiefel-Whitney classes of vector bundles over highly connected complexes

It is a classical theorem of Milnor that for every vector bundle over Sn, all the Stiefel-Whitney classes vanish if and only if n≠1,2,4,8. We describe a space B as W-trivial (except for one dimension) if for every vector bundle over B, all the Stiefel-Whitney classes vanish (except for a single fixed dimension). We establish theorems which state that certain high-connectivities of B imply these trivialities as well as a theorem which states that there are infinitely many “W-trivial except for one dimension” spaces.