Class numbers, the Novikov conjecture, and transformation groups (Q1825483)

\textit{J. Ewing} [Math. Z. 165, 53-71 (1979; Zbl 0416.12009)] showed that the G-signature of a smooth G-manifold for \(G=Z_ p\), p an odd prime, is essentially unrestricted if and only if the class number of the cyclotomic field containing the p-th roots of unity is odd. \textit{G. Katz} [Am. J. Math. 108, 1277-1302 (1986; Zbl 0624.57031) and ibid. 109, 592- 617 (1987; Zbl 0651.57029)] has elaborated on this, using results from smooth equivariant cobordism theory, to prove precise integrality formulae; in particular, he connects the G-signature mod 4 to the signatures and local representations occurring at components of the fixed set. In a different direction the author [Am. J. Math. 108, 1005-1021, 1259- 1276 (1986; Zbl 0628.57020 and Zbl 0628.57021)] showed that the existence of certain group actions on nonsimply connected manifolds forces their higher structures to vanish. In fact, the Novikov conjecture is equivalent to a statement about group actions. In yet another direction, \textit{S. Cappell} and the author constructed [Atiyah-Singer classes for the PL group actions (Preprint)] certain characteristic classes for semifree PL (locally linear) G-actions; these were applied there to prove a splitting theorem for some classifying spaces. This splitting, crucial for many equivariant existence and classification problems, at the prime 2 depends on understanding peripheral invariants of free group actions on sphere bundles. For locally-nonlinear actions, the results are deduced by means of comparison to the locally linear case. In this paper, we study the cobordism of homologically trivial actions and use it to unify, extend, and improve our understanding of all the above phenomena. The method is to consider, say, \(QHT_ n(Z_ p,X)\) which is roughly speaking the cobordism group of n-manifolds with rationally homologically trivial \(Z_ p\)-action, mapping into X. This is not a representable functor, and one cannot reduce the problem to stable homotopy theory of some Thom spectrum.