The tangential Thom class of a Poincaré duality group (Q500946): Difference between revisions

Suppose that \(\Gamma\) is a Poincaré duality group, that is to say that \(\Gamma\) is of type FP and there is a homomorphism \(w : \Gamma \rightarrow \{\pm 1\}\) and a class \([\Gamma]\) in the group homology \(H_{n}(\Gamma ; {\mathbb Z}^{w})\) such that there is a Poincaré duality isomorphism \[ \cdot \cap [\Gamma]: H^{i}(\Gamma; M) \rightarrow H_{n-i}(\Gamma ; M^{w}) \] for any \(i \in {\mathbb Z}\) and any left \({\mathbb Z}\Gamma\) module \(M\). By analogy with the normal bundle to the diagonal embedding \(X \rightarrow X \;\times \;X\) for a smooth manifold the author shows the existence of what he calls the tangential Thom class \(U \in H^{n}(\Gamma \;\times \;\Gamma; {\mathbb Z}\Gamma \Delta^{w_{l}})\) where \(\Gamma\Delta\) is the set of cosets \((\Gamma \;\times \;\Gamma)/\Delta\Gamma\). The author shows that this class pulls back to the preferred generator of \(H^{n}(\Gamma; {\mathbb Z}\Gamma^{w})\). Furthermore there is a Thom isomorphism \[ H^{i}(\Gamma; M) \rightarrow H^{i+n}(\Gamma \;\times \;\Gamma; M \;\otimes \;({\mathbb Z}\Gamma\Delta^{w_{l}})) \] derived from a cup product with the class \(U\).