Topologically invariant integral characteristic classes (Q1075645)

One of the many major achievements in geometric topology during the 1960's was S. P. Novikov's and L. Siebenmann's proof of the topological invariance of the rational Pontryagin classes of smooth manifolds. Milnor had earlier shown that the integral Pontryagin classes were not topological invariants. A natural question remained as to what is the smallest multiple \(c_ k\) of the integral Pontryagin classes \(p_ k\in H^{4k}(X; {\mathbb{Z}})\) which is topologically invariant. More generally, let \(x\in H^*(BO;\Lambda)\) \((\Lambda ={\mathbb{Z}}\) or \({\mathbb{Q}})\) be a universal characteristic class of stable vector bundles. Then x is topologically invariant if for vector bundles \(\xi_ 0\) and \(\xi_ 1\) whose underlying microbundles are stably equivalent the images of x in \(H^*(X;\Lambda)\) are equal. The author gives necessary and sufficient conditions for x to be topologically invariant. He then proceeds, using work of Adams and Sullivan, to determine the even part and give some estimates on the odd part of \(c_ k\), and calculates the value of \(c_ k\) for \(k\leq 8\). From this, the author is able to deduce a conjecture of Siebenmann that there are topologically invariant integral characteristic classes that do not come from \(H^*(BTOP; {\mathbb{Z}}[])/Torsion\).