On Fredholm index, transversal approximations and Quillen's geometric complex cobordism of Hilbert manifolds with some applications to flag varieties of loop groups

In [Contemp. Math. 258 (2000) 1-19], by using Fredholm index we developed a version of Quillen's geometric cobordism theory for infinite dimensional Hilbert manifolds. This cobordism theory has a graded group structure under topological union operation and has push-forward maps for complex orientable Fredholm maps. In this work, by using Quinn's Transversality Theorem [Proc. Sympos. Pure. Math. 15 (1970) 213-222], it will be shown that this cobordism theory has a graded ring structure under transversal intersection operation and has pull-back maps for smooth maps. It will be shown that the Thom isomorphism in this theory will be satisfied for finite dimensional vector bundles over separable Hilbert manifolds and the projection formula for Gysin maps will be proved. After we discuss the relation between this theory and classical cobordism, we describe some applications to the complex cobordism of flag varieties of loop groups and we do some calculations.     

Products of cell-like decompositions

This paper represents a survey concerning cell-like decompositions of manifolds. Primarily it summarizes the status of results and problems describing when the product of E¹ with such a decomposition space is again a manifold, and more generally it discusses conditions under which the product of two such decomposition spaces is also a manifold.     

The geometry of a bi-Lagrangian manifold

This is a survey on bi-Lagrangian manifolds, which are symplectic manifolds endowed with two transversal Lagrangian foliations. We also study the non-integrable case (i.e., a symplectic manifold endowed with two transversal Lagrangian distributions). We show that many different geometric structures can be attached to these manifolds and we carefully analyze the associated connections. Moreover, we introduce the problem of the intersection of the two leaves, one of each foliation, through a point and show a lot of significative examples.     

Lower bound theorem for normal pseudomanifolds

In this paper we present a self-contained combinatorial proof of the lower bound theorem for normal pseudomanifolds, including a treatment of the cases of equality in this theorem. We also discuss McMullen and Walkup's generalized lower bound conjecture for triangulated spheres in the context of the lower bound theorem. Finally, we pose a new lower bound conjecture for non-simply connected triangulated manifolds.     

Contact structures, equivariant spin bordism, and periodic fundamental groups

Using contact surgery and equivariant bordism theory, we prove the existence of contact structures on all 5-dimensional spin manifolds with certain finite fundamental groups. Received September 13, 1999 / Revised version September 13, 2000 / Published online April 12, 2001     

Special manifolds and shape fibrator properties

Our main interest in this paper is further investigation of the concept of (PL) fibrators (introduced by Daverman [R.J. Daverman, PL maps with manifold fibers, J. London Math. Soc. (2) 45 (1992) 180-192]), in a slightly different PL setting. Namely, we are interested in manifolds that can detect approximate fibrations in the new setting. The main results state that every orientable, special (a new class of manifolds that we introduce) PL n-manifold with non-trivial first homology group is a fibrator in the new category, if it is a codimension-2 fibrator (Theorem 8.2) or has a non-cyclic fundamental group (Theorem 8.4). We show that all closed, orientable surface S with χ(S)<0 are fibrators in the new category.     

6-dimensional manifolds with effective T4-actions

Suppose the four dimensional torus T⁴ acts effectively on a 6-manifold M so that the orbit space M¹ is a closed 2-disk, and there exist no exceptional orbits, and the isotropy groups span T⁴. Then the fundamental group of M is a finite abelian group with at most two generators. In this paper, we obtain a homology classification of manifolds of this type under an additional hypothesis that one of the two generators is trivial. We then use this result to obtain a complete classification of simply connected 6-manifolds supporting effective T⁴-actions.     

Colouring games based on autotopisms of Latin hyper-rectangles

Abstract

Every partial colouring of a Hamming graph is uniquely related to a partial Latin hyper-rectangle. In this paper we introduce the Θ-stabilized (a, b)-colouring game for Hamming graphs, a variant of the (a, b)-colouring game so that each move must respect a given autotopism Θ of the resulting partial Latin hyperrectangle. We examine the complexity of this variant by means of its chromatic number. We focus in particular on the bi-dimensional case, for which the game is played on the Cartesian product of two complete graphs, and also on the hypercube case.     

Vanishing structure set of Haken 3-manifolds

In this article we prove that the surgery groups of the fundamental group of a certain class of Haken 3-manifolds can be computed in terms of a generalized homology theory even if the manifolds do not support any nonpositively curved Riemannian metric. A consequence of this result is that the integral Novikov conjecture is true for the fundamental group of this class of manifolds. Received October 2, 1998 / in revised form February 10, 2000 / Published online July 20, 2000     

Topology of compact space forms from Platonic solids. I.

The problem of classifying, up to isometry, the orientable 3-manifolds that arise by identifying the faces of a Platonic solid was completely solved in a nice paper of Everitt [B. Everitt, 3-manifolds from Platonic solids, Topology Appl. 138 (2004) 253-263]. His work completes the classification begun by Best [L.A. Best, On torsion-free discrete subgroups of PSL₂(C) with compact orbit space, Canad. J. Math. 23 (1971) 451-460], Lorimer [P.J. Lorimer, Four dodecahedral spaces, Pacific J. Math. 156 (2) (1992) 329-335], Prok [I. Prok, Classification of dodecahedral space forms, Beiträge Algebra Geom. 39 (2) (1998) 497-515], and Richardson and Rubinstein [J. Richardson, J.H. Rubinstein, Hyperbolic manifolds from a regular polyhedron, Preprint]. In this paper we investigate the topology of closed orientable 3-manifolds from Platonic solids. Here we completely recognize those manifolds in the spherical and Euclidean cases, and state topological properties for many of them in the hyperbolic case. The proofs of the latter will appear in a forthcoming paper.     

A graph-theoretical representation of PL-manifolds — A survey on crystallizations

This is a survey of the techniques and results developed by M. Pezzana and his group, which includes, besides the authors, A. Cavicchioli, P. Bandieri and A Donati.The original concept is that of contracted triangulation, which was introduced with the main goal of finding a minimal atlas for topological manifolds ([P₁ 1968], [P₂ 1974], [P₃ 1974], [FG₂ 1979]). Only later did the possibility of deducing a graph-theoretical tool — the crystallization — for representing P.L. manifolds occur as a major aspect of the theory ([P₄ 1975], [F₁ 1976]). This leads to an application of graph theory to P.L. topology, which seems not to have been explored before. Recently, other authors outside Italy have independently become interested in this subject.For the sake of conciseness, definitions and statements often appear in a form other than that of the quoted references.     

3-manifolds which are orbit spaces of diffeomorphisms

In a very general setting, we show that a 3-manifold obtained as the orbit space of the basin of a topological attractor is either S²×S¹ or irreducible.We then study in more detail the topology of a class of 3-manifolds which are also orbit spaces and arise as invariants of gradient-like diffeomorphisms (in dimension 3). Up to a finite number of exceptions, which we explicitly describe, all these manifolds are Haken and, by changing the diffeomorphism by a finite power, all the Seifert components of the Jaco-Shalen-Johannson decomposition of these manifolds are made into product circle bundles.     

Affine foliations and covering hyperbolic structures

We describe the relationship between closed affine laminations in a punctured surface and some associated hyperbolic structures on certain covers of the punctured surface, which we call covering hyperbolic structures. Further, in analogy with the theory of William Thurston relating the Teichmüller space of a surface to the projective lamination space, we describe a space with points representing affine laminations in a given surface and with other points representing the associated covering hyperbolic structures. Received: 27 March 2000 / Revised version: 10 January 2001     

On the localization formula in equivariant cohomology

We give a generalization of the Atiyah-Bott-Berline-Vergne localization theorem for the equivariant cohomology of a torus action. We replace the manifold having a torus action by an equivariant map of manifolds having a compact connected Lie group action. This provides a systematic method for calculating the Gysin homomorphism in ordinary cohomology of an equivariant map. As an example, we recover a formula of Akyildiz-Carrell for the Gysin homomorphism of flag manifolds.     

Intrinsic products and factorizations of matrices

We say that the product of a row vector and a column vector is intrinsic if there is at most one nonzero product of corresponding coordinates. Analogously we speak about intrinsic product of two or more matrices, as well as about intrinsic factorizations of matrices. Since all entries of the intrinsic product are products of entries of the multiplied matrices, there is no addition. We present several examples, together with important applications. These applications include companion matrices and sign-nonsingular matrices.     

Estimating Matveev's complexity via crystallization theory

In [M.R. Casali, Computing Matveev's complexity of non-orientable 3-manifolds via crystallization theory, Topology Appl. 144(1-3) (2004) 201-209], a graph-theoretical approach to Matveev's complexity computation is introduced, yielding the complete classification of closed non-orientable 3-manifolds up to complexity six. The present paper follows the same point-of view, making use of crystallization theory and related results (see [M. Ferri, Crystallisations of 2-fold branched coverings of S³, Proc. Amer. Math. Soc. 73 (1979) 271-276; M.R. Casali, Coloured knots and coloured graphs representing 3-fold simple coverings of S³, Discrete Math. 137 (1995) 87-98; M.R. Casali, From framed links to crystallizations of bounded 4-manifolds, J. Knot Theory Ramifications 9(4) (2000) 443-458]) in order to significantly improve existing estimations for complexity of both 2-fold and three-fold simple branched coverings (see [O.M. Davydov, The complexity of 2-fold branched coverings of a 3-sphere, Acta Appl. Math. 75 (2003) 51-54] and [O.M. Davydov, Estimating complexity of 3-manifolds as of branched coverings, talk-abstract, Second Russian-German Geometry Meeting dedicated to 90-anniversary of A.D.Alexandrov, Saint-Petersburg, Russia, June 2002]) and 3-manifolds seen as Dehn surgery (see [G. Amendola, An algorithm producing a standard spine of a 3-manifold presented by surgery along a link, Rend. Circ. Mat. Palermo 51 (2002) 179-198]).     

The positive definite completion problem revisited

In [R. Grone, C.R. Johnson, E. Sa, H. Wolkowicz, Positive definite completions of partial Hermitian matrices, Linear Algebra Appl. 58 (1984) 109-124] the positive definite (semi-) completion problem in which the underlying graph is chordal was solved. For the positive definite case, the process was constructive and the completion was obtained by completing the partial matrix an entry at a time. For the positive semidefinite case, they obtained completions of a particular sequence of partial positive definite matrices with the same underlying graph and noted that there is a convergent subsequence of these completions that converges to the desired completion. Here, in the chordal case, we provide a constructive solution, based entirely on matrix/graph theoretic methods, to the positive (semi-)definite completion problem. Our solution associates a specific tree (called the “clique tree” [C.R. Johnson, M. Lundquist, Matrices with chordal inverse zero-patterns, Linear and Multilinear Algebra 36 (1993) 1-17]) with the (chordal) graph of the given partial positive (semi-)definite matrix. This tree structure allows us to complete the matrix a “block at a time” as opposed to an “entry at a time” (as in Grone et al. (1984) for the positive definite case). In Grone et al. (1984), using complex analytic techniques, the completion for the positive definite case was shown to be the unique determinant maximizing completion and was shown to be the unique completion that has zeros in its inverse in the positions corresponding to the unspecified entries of the partial matrix. Here, we show the same using only matrix/graph theoretic tools.     

Heegaard splittings of twisted torus knots

Little is known on the classification of Heegaard splittings for hyperbolic 3-manifolds. Although Kobayashi gave a complete classification of Heegaard splittings for the exteriors of 2-bridge knots, our knowledge of other classes is extremely limited. In particular, there are very few hyperbolic manifolds that are known to have a unique minimal genus splitting. Here we demonstrate that an infinite class of hyperbolic knot exteriors, namely exteriors of certain “twisted torus knots” originally studied by Morimoto, Sakuma and Yokota, have a unique minimal genus Heegaard splitting of genus two. We also conjecture that these manifolds possess irreducible yet weakly reducible splittings of genus three. There are no known examples of such Heegaard splittings.     

Inequalities for eigenvalues of a clamped plate problem

In this paper we study eigenvalues of a clamped plate problem on compact domains in complete manifolds. For complete manifolds admitting special functions, we prove universal inequalities for eigenvalues of clamped plate problem independent of the domains of Payne?CPólya?CWeinberger?CYang type. These manifolds include Hadamard manifolds with Ricci curvature bounded below, a class of warped product manifolds, the product of Euclidean spaces with any complete manifolds and manifolds admitting eigenmaps to a sphere. In the case of warped product manifolds, our result implies a universal inequality on hyperbolic space proved by Cheng?CYang. We also strengthen an inequality for eigenvalues of clamped plate problem on submanifolds in a Euclidean space obtained recently by Cheng, Ichikawa and Mametsuka.     

Cayley transform and the Kronecker product of Hermitian matrices

We consider the conditions under which the Cayley transform of the Kronecker product of two Hermitian matrices can be again presented as a Kronecker product of two matrices and, if so, if it is a product of the Cayley transforms of the two Hermitian matrices. We also study the related question: given two matrices, which matrix under the Cayley transform yields the Kronecker product of their Cayley transforms.