Bordism of regularly defective maps (Q1434507)

This paper deals with the cobordism group of regularly defective maps of closed manifolds into a topological space, and specifically with the case when the target space is the circle. In order to present the main results of the paper in more detail, let us recall that by a regularly defective map into a space \(V\) is meant a triple \((M,\Delta,f)\), where \(M\) is a closed manifold, \(\Delta\) is a closed submanifold of \(M\), and \(f\) is a continuous map \(f:M-\Delta\to V\). By the local defect index of such a map is meant the homotopy class of the restriction of \(f\) to a fiber \(S^k\approx SN_x\) of the sphere bundle \(SN\) of the normal bundle \(N\) to \(\Delta\) in \(M\). There is a notion of bordism classes of regularly defective maps defined in an obvious manner, and it is well known that the bordism group \({\mathfrak N}_n^{\text{def}, \Lambda}(V)\) of defective maps with local defect index in a subset \(\Lambda\subset \cup_k[S^k,V]\) is isomorphic to the ordinary bordism group \({\mathfrak N}_n(D_\Lambda V)\) of the defect complex \(D_\Lambda V\) (roughly, the space obtained by attaching to \(V\) one copy of the disc bundle \(D\gamma^k\) of the universal vector bundle over BO\((k)\) for each map \(f:S\gamma^k\to V\) the restriction of which to a fiber is in the class \(\Lambda\), the attachment being done with the help of the map \(f)\), the isomorphism provided by a canonical extension of the defective map \(f:M-\Delta \to V\) to a continuous map \(F:M \to D_\Lambda V\). The defect complex \(D_\Lambda S^1\) has a relatively simple structure due to the fact that \([S^k, S^1]=0\) for \(k\neq 1\) and the space of continuous maps of \(S^1\) into itself of a fixed degree can be deformed to \(S^1\) itself. This fact enables the authors to compute homology of \(D_\Lambda S^1\), which is one of the main results of the paper. Next, using this result, as well as the well known fact that \({\mathfrak N}_n(V)\) is completely detected by the Stiefel-Whitney characteristic numbers, the authors prove that the bordism class of a defective map \(f:M\to S^1\) with the defect submanifold \(\Delta\) is determined by characteristic numbers of the form \(\langle w_1(M)\cup \alpha,[M] \rangle\), \(\langle w_1(TM|_\Lambda)\cup w_2(N \Delta)^{q-1}\), \([\Delta]\rangle\), and \(\langle w_1(TM |_\lambda) \cup w_2(N \Delta)^{q-1} \cup\beta,[\Delta] \rangle\), for certain cohomology classes \(\alpha \in H^1(M;\mathbb Z_2)\), and \(\beta\in H^1 (\Delta;\mathbb Z_2)\).