A simple construction of Atiyah-Singer classes and piecewise linear transformation groups (Q2276813)

The authors of the paper deal with semifree PL locally linear actions of finite groups on manifolds, as well as PL actions that are not necessarily locally linear but do have manifolds as the fixed point sets. They present a construction of the Atiyah-Singer classes associated to such actions. Their approach is based on the analysis and comparison of classifying spaces for oriented equivariant PL k-codimensional neighborhoods of manifolds [cf. \textit{L. Jones}, Proc. Symp. Pure Math., Vol. 32, Part 1, 131-140 (1978; Zbl 0398.57005)]. The authors show how the Atiyah-Singer classes enter into the existence and classification problems for group actions. In particular, their Hard Extension across Homology Collar Theorem gives a classification of orientation preserving PL locally linear semifree actions on the disk with fixed point set of codimension \(\neq 2\) [cf. \textit{L. Jones}, ``Combinatorial symmetries of the m-dimensional ball'', Mem. Am. Math. Soc. 352 (1986; Zbl 0593.57023)], as well as similar classification for cyclic prime power order group actions on spheres. The authors also analyze obstructions, called Rothenberg classes, to concording non-locally linear actions to locally linear actions with a given fixed point set.