The Cayley plane and string bordism (Q463144)

The author shows that the kernel of the string orientation \(MO\langle 8 \rangle_* \to tmf_*\) localized away from the primes \(2\) and \(3\) precisely coincides with the ideal of string cobordisms classes which can be represented by Cayley plane bundles. It was already observed in the 1990's that such bordism classes have trivial Witten genus, and Dessai and Höhn independently proved that bordism classes of Cayley plane bundles generate the kernel of the string orientation rationally, e.g. see [\textit{A. Dessai}, Contemp. Math. 504, 99--115 (2009; Zbl 1219.58009)]. The way the author of the present paper obtains the result essentially consists of two steps. He first uses the work of \textit{M. Hovey} [Algebr. Geom. Topol. 8, No. 4, 2401--2414 (2008; Zbl 1165.55001)] (who described \(MO\langle 8 \rangle_*\) away from the primes \(2\) and \(3\) in terms of \(BP_*\)-theory) to find a criterion for a set \(S\) of cobordism classes in \(MO\langle 8 \rangle_*\) which can be used to decide whether or not the set \(S\) generates \(MO\langle 8 \rangle_*[1/6]\) multiplicatively. Indeed this criterion is quite easy: it is simply given by checking a couple of divisility criteria for two specific (very well computable) sequences of characteristic classes, namely the sequences of characteristic classes \(s_n\) and \(s_{m,n}\), respectively. After the author established this criterion he proceeds and provides a concrete list of generators meeting the criterion. The corresponding generators he uses all are realized by Cayley plane bundles over complete intersections in a product of two complex projective spaces.