The positive cone of spheres and some products of spheres (Q1769635)

Summary: Motivated by Elliott's \(K\)-theoretic classification of \(C^*\)-algebras of type AF, we compute the positive cone of the \(K\)-theory of some spaces. These include the spheres, the products of an odd-dimensional sphere by a sphere, the products of the 2-sphere by a sphere, and of the products \(S^4\times S^4\), \(S^4\times S^6\), \(S^6\times S^6\) and \(S^6\times S^8\). This amounts to computing the geometric dimension of stable classes of complex vector bundles over these spaces. We establish a few general properties of the positive cone and of approximations to it, the \(\gamma\)-cone and the \(c\)-cone. We also get information on the Whitehead product structure in the homotopy groups of \(BU(n)\). Moreover, we prove a ``doubling formula'' for Stirling numbers of the second kind.