Stratified fibrations and the intersection homology of the regular neighborhoods of bottom strata (Q1414248)

The main result is the existence of a Leray-Serre-type spectral sequence that computes the intersection homology of both the regular neighborhood and the deleted regular neighborhood of the bottom stratum of a stratified PL (piecewise linear) pseudomanifold. The \(E^2\) terms are given by the ordinary homology of the bottom stratum whose local coefficient system is the intersection homology of the link of the bottom stratum (for the deleted regular neighborhood), or the cone on that link (for the full regular neighborhood). Roughly, stratified PL pseudomanifolds are locally conelike spaces that are disjoint unions of PL manifolds (the strata) such that the singular set (i.e., the union of all the strata not of highest dimension) is of codimension at least two. The spectral sequences are definitely detecting stratified phenomena, because disregarding stratifications, the neighborhood is homotopy equivalent to the bottom stratum. The proof uses and extends the work of \textit{F. Quinn} [J. Am. Math. Soc. 1, No.2, 441-499 (1988; Zbl 0655.57010)] and the reviewer [Proc. R. Soc. Edinb., Sect. A, Math. 129, No.2, 351-384 (1999; Zbl 0923.55007)]. Specifically, it is shown that the regular neighborhood is stratum preserving homotopy equivalent to the mapping cylinder of a stratified fibration. By using the stratum preserving homotopy invariance of intersection homology (a nice proof of this is included), the basic ideas for constructing spectral sequences of ordinary fibrations can be employed in this stratified setting (to cover simplify matters). The spectral sequences can be combined with the intersection homology version of the Mayer-Vietoris theorem to compute the intersection homology of some stratified PL pseudomanifolds. Such a program has been carried out by the author [Intersection Alexander polynomials, preprint, to appear in Topology] to define and study intersection Alexander polynomials of non-locally flat, high dimensional PL knots (it is the non-local flatness that gives rise to natural stratifications).