Kernel of the variation operator and periodicity of open books (Q1767730)

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Kernel of the variation operator and periodicity of open books
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    Kernel of the variation operator and periodicity of open books (English)
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    8 March 2005
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    Let \(F\) be a manifold with boundary \(\partial F\). Two diffeomorphisms \(\varphi\) and \(\psi\) of \(F\) that are identities on the boundary are called \textsl{pseudo-isotopic} relative to the boundary if there is a diffeomorphism \({\mathcal H}\colon F\times I \to F\times I\) such that \[ {\mathcal H}| _{F \times [0]}= \varphi, \quad {\mathcal H}| _{F \times [1]}= \psi, \quad {\mathcal H}| _{\partial F \times I}= \text{id}. \] The group of pseudo-isotopy classes of such diffeomorphisms is denoted by \(\widetilde \pi_0 \text{Diff}(F, \text{rel} \partial)\). Any diffeomorphism \(\varphi \in \widetilde \pi_0 \text{Diff}(F, \text{rel} \partial)\) induces the variation homomorphism \[ \text{Var} \varphi: H_n(F, \partial F) \to H_n(F); \] this correspondence gives a well-defined map \[ \text{Var}: \widetilde \pi_0 \text{Diff}(F, \text{rel}) \to \Hom(H_n(F, \partial F), H_n(F)) \] and the subgroup \[ \widetilde \pi_0 V \text{Diff}(F, \text{rel})=\{ f \in \widetilde \pi_0 \text{Diff}(F, \text{rel} \partial): \text{Var} (f)[z]=0, \;\forall [z]\in H_n(F, \partial F)\} \] is called the kernel of the variation operator. In the paper under review the authors consider a parallelizable \(2n\)-manifold \(F\) which has the homotopy type of the wedge product of \(n\)-spheres and describe the algebraic structure of this kernel; in particular they prove that, if \(n\geq 3\), then the following sequence \[ 0 \to \Theta_{2n+1}\to \widetilde \pi_0 V \text{Diff}(F, \text{rel}) \to \Hom(H_n(F, \partial F), S\pi_n(SO(n))) \to 0 \] is exact, where \(S\pi_n(SO(n))\) is the image of \(\pi_n(SO(n))\) in \(\pi_n(SO(n+1))\) under the natural inclusion \(SO(n) \to SO(n+1)\), and \(\Theta_{2n+1}\) represents the group of all homotopy \((2n+1)\)-spheres. This approach is based on the results of Kreck, who has computed the group of isotopy classes of diffeomorphisms of closed \((n-1)\)-connected almost-parallelizable \(2n\)-manifolds in terms of exact sequences [see \textit{M. Kreck}, Algebraic topology, Proc. Symp., Aarhus 1978, Lect. Notes Math. 763, 643--663 (1979; Zbl 0421.57009)]. The previous exact sequence is then applied to study the periodicity properties of branched cyclic coverings of manifolds with open book decompositions. An open book decomposition of a closed \((m+1)\)-dimensional manifold \(M\) is a presentation of this manifold as the union \(M \simeq F_{\varphi} \cup_r (\partial F \times D^2)\), where \(F\) is a \(m\)-dimensional manifold with boundary \(\partial F\), \(\varphi \in \text{Diff}(F, \text{rel} \partial)\) is an orientation preserving diffeomorphism of \(F\) that keeps the boundary pointwise fixed, and \(F_{\varphi}\) is the mapping torus of \(\varphi\). The obtained results allow to give different proofs of two results of Stevens concerning the periodicity in high dimensions [see \textit{J. Stevens}, Math. Ann. 273, 227--239 (1986; Zbl 0566.57008)]; for the periodicity problem in dimension 3, the authors consider the cyclic coverings of \(\mathbb S^3\) branched over the trefoil knot as an example with shows that there is no topological periodicity in this dimension.
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    Isotopy classes of diffeomorphisms
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    cyclic branched covers
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