Invariance of Pontrjagin classes for Bott manifolds (Q2346729): Difference between revisions

A Bott tower of height \(n\) is defined to be a sequence of fibre bundles \(\pi_ j: B_ j \rightarrow B_ {j-1}\) \((j=1, \dots, n)\), each with fibre \(\mathbb C P^1\), where \(B_ 0\) is a single point and \(B_ j\) \((j\geq 1)\) is the projectivization \(P(\underline{\mathbb C}\oplus L_ j)\) of the Whitney sum of a trivial complex line bundle \(\underline{\mathbb C}\) and a holomorphic line bundle \(L_ j\) over \(B_ {j-1}\). Then \(B_ n\) is a toric manifold of complex dimension \(n\) (that is, \(B_ n\) is a smooth compact algebraic variety admitting an algebraic action of \((\mathbb C^ \ast)^ n\) with an open dense orbit) called the \(n\)-stage Bott manifold (briefly Bott manifold), associated with the line bundles \(L_ 1, \dots, L_ n\). The paper under review studies graded ring isomorphisms between the integer cohomology rings of Bott manifolds. The first main result of this paper is that any graded ring isomorphism between the cohomology rings with integer coefficients of two Bott manifolds preserves their Pontrjagin classes. As a corollary, the authors obtain that the number of Bott manifolds whose cohomology ring is isomorphic to a given ring is finite up to diffeomorphisms. This provides evidence supporting the conjecture (called the strong cohomology rigidity conjecture for Bott manifolds) that any graded ring isomorphism between the cohomology rings with integer coefficients of two Bott manifolds should be induced by a diffeomorphism. The second main result of the paper is that the strong cohomology rigidity conjecture holds true for the Bott manifolds \(B_ n\) such that the cohomology rings \(H^\ast(B_ n;\mathbb Z/2\mathbb Z)\) and \(H^\ast(({\mathbb CP}^ 1)^ n;\mathbb Z/2\mathbb Z)\) are isomorphic as graded rings.