Stably extendible vector bundles over the real projective spaces and the lens spaces (Q1970896)

The authors have studied extendible vector bundles over lens spaces and real projective spaces in earlier papers [ibid. 5, 487-497 (1975; Zbl 0314.55028); Mem. Fac. Sci., Kochi Univ., Ser. A 1, 23-33 (1980; Zbl 0437.55008)]. In this paper they investigate the stable extendibility of vector bundles over these spaces. The main results are summarized as follows: (1) A \(k\)-dimensional complex vector bundle \(E\to \mathbb{R} P^n\) which is stably extendible to \(\mathbb{R} P^m\) for any \(m>n\) is stably equivalent to a sum of \(k\) complex line bundles. (2) A \(k\)-dimensional vector bundle \(E\to L^n(3)\) which is stably extendible to \(L^m(3)\) for any \(m>n\) is stably equivalent to a sum of \([k/2]\) 2-plane bundles. The proofs of these theorems use the stable versions of theorems in the papers above. The authors also discuss the stable extendibility of the tangent bundles of \(\mathbb{R} P^n\) and \(L^n(p)\) with \(p\) an odd prime. In particular, the final section deals with an interesting case. It is shown there that if \(n>12\), the complexification of the tangent bundle \(L^n(4)\) is not stably extendible to \(L^{2n+2}(4)\).