A note about the isotropy groups of 2-plane bundles over closed surfaces (Q1429239)

This paper deals with the problem of finding out, given a vector bundle \(\xi\) and a line bundle \(\lambda\) over a Riemannian manifold, whether \(\xi\) and \(\xi\otimes\lambda\) are equivalent or not. [\textit{M. C. Crabb}, \textit{M. Spreafico} and \textit{W. A. Sutherland}, Math. Proc. Camb. Philos. Soc. 125, 223--242 (1999; Zbl 0917.55011)] gave a complete answer to this question for the case of \(n\)-plane bundles over the \(n\)-real projective space. In this paper the authors study the case of 2-plane bundles over closed surfaces utilizing some techniques given there. The authors' main result is the following theorem: Let \(\xi\) be a real 2-plane bundle over a closed surface \(S\). Then, for any line bundle \(\lambda\) over \(S\), \(\xi\otimes \lambda\) and \(\xi\) are equivalent if and only if \(w_1^2(\lambda)+w_1(\lambda)w_1(\xi)=0\) where \(w_1(\lambda), w_1(\xi) \in H^1(S; {\mathbb{Z}}_2)\) are the first Stiefel-Whitney classes. Let \(\mathcal{I}(\xi)\) denote the isotropy group of \(\xi\), that is, the group of all line bundles \(\lambda\) over \(S\) such that \(\xi\otimes \lambda\cong\xi\). Then this theorem yields the corollary: If \(\xi\) is an orientable 2-bundle over an orientable surface \(S\), then \({\mathcal{I}}(\xi)\cong H^1(S; {\mathbb{Z}}_2)\). From the fact that \(O(2)\) is isomorphic to the semi-direct product of \({\mathbb{Z}}_2\) and \(SO(2)\), one obtains a \({\mathbb{Z}}_2\)-bundle \({\mathbb{C}}P^\infty \to BO(2) \to {\mathbb{R}}P^\infty\) of classifying spaces. In the present case this serves as a key tool for the proof of the theorem. The authors first show that the Stiefel-Whitney class \(w : \widetilde{KO}(S) \to \tilde{H}^*(S; {\mathbb{Z}}_2)\) is a bijection and in the next stage they prove that this map characterizes completely the {unstable} class of \(\xi\). In the final section the authors give interesting examples of computations of the isotropy groups for low genus surfaces (namely the sphere, the torus together with the connected sum of two tori, the real projective plane and the Klein bottle).