Algebraic cycles and the classical groups. I: Real cycles (Q1863517)

The authors study the groups \({\mathcal Z}_{\mathbb R}^{q}({\mathbb P}(V))\) of real algebraic cycles on a complex projective space \({\mathbb P}(V)\). ``Real'' means here the cycles that are fixed by the Galois group \({\mathcal Gal}({\mathbb C}/{\mathbb R})\). In his thesis \textit{T.-K. Lam} [``Spaces of real algebraic cycles and homotopy theory'', Ph.D. Thesis, SUNY, Stony Brook, NY, USA (1990)] showed that the homotopy type of \({\mathcal Z}_{\mathbb R}^{q}({\mathbb P}(V))\) is independent of \(V\). The authors prove that \({\mathcal Z}_{\mathbb R}^{q}({\mathbb P}(V))\) decomposes canonically into a product of Eilenberg-MacLane spaces of the groups \(\mathbb Z\) and \({\mathbb Z}_2\). The Grassmannian \({\mathcal G}_{\mathbb R}^{q}({\mathbb P}(V))\) of codimension \(q\) planes embeds naturally in \({\mathcal Z}^{q}_{\mathbb R}({\mathbb P}(V))\) as degree \(1\) cycles. This yields the map \(P : BO_q \rightarrow {\mathcal Z}^{q}_{\mathbb R}({\mathbb P}^{\infty})\), which after taking limits gives the map \(P : BO \rightarrow {\mathcal Z}_{\mathbb R}^{\infty}\). The authors show that \({\mathcal Z}_{\mathbb R}^{\infty}\) has the structure of an \(E_{\infty}\)-ring space and that \(P\) is an infinite loop map. Therefore one obtains the map of corresponding spectra. Let \({\mathcal{\widetilde Z}}_{\mathbb R}^{q}({\mathbb P}(V))= {{\mathcal Z}_{\mathbb R}^{q}({\mathbb P}(V))}/{{\mathcal Z}_{av}^{q}({\mathbb P}(V))}\) where \({{\mathcal Z}_{av}^{q}({\mathbb P}(V))}=\{c+{\bar c} \in {{\mathcal Z}_{\mathbb C}^{q}({\mathbb P}(V))}\}\). The authors show that the limiting maps \({\mathcal Z}_{\mathbb R}^{\infty} \rightarrow {\mathcal Z}_{\mathbb C}^{\infty}\) and \({\mathcal Z}_{\mathbb R}^{\infty} \rightarrow {\mathcal {\widetilde Z}}_{\mathbb R}^{\infty}\) composed with \(P\) classify the total Chern class of the complexification and the total Stiefel-Whitney class respectively. Therefore they obtain the characteristic mapping and also prove that \(P\) represents the restriction to the fixed point sets of the equivariant Chern class, considered by \textit{P. dos Santos} in his thesis [``Algebraic cycles on real varieties and \(\mathbb{Z}/2\)-equivariant homotopy theory,'' SUNY, Stony Brook, NY, USA (1999); cf. Proc. Lond. Math. Soc. (3) 86, 513--544 (2003; Zbl 1037.14007)].