Cubic forms and complex 3-folds (Q1911501)

The topological classification of 1-connected, closed, oriented, 6-dimensional manifolds with torsion free homology was carried out by several authors by using a suitable system of 6 algebraic invariants, the most important of which is the cup form. In this paper the authors survey these results and study the symmetric trilinear forms: They give a criterion for the realisability of such a form as a cup product and they study its algebraic and arithmetical properties. Then they consider the question of the realisability of complex cubic forms by complex manifolds, giving many interesting examples and some condition for Kähler manifolds.