Geometric cycles and characteristic classes of manifold bundles (with an appendix by M. Krannich) (Q2030893)

For a lattice \(\Lambda \subset \mathbb R^{p+q}\) with \(1 \le p \le q\) that is endowed with a quadratic form of signature \((p,q)\) and \(SO(\Lambda)\) the group of automorphisms of \(\Lambda\) with determinant \(1\), the author proves that for any \(n \ge 1\), there is a finite-index subgroup \(\Gamma \leq SO(\Lambda)\) such that \(H^p(\Gamma;\mathbb Q) \ge n\). This is a new statement about the unstable cohomology of certain arithmetic groups. The essential idea of the proof is to employ geometric cycles in the sense of \textit{J. J. Millson} and \textit{M. S. Raghunathan} [Proc. Indian Acad. Sci., Math. Sci. 90, 103--124 (1981; Zbl 0514.22007)]. Then an application to the study of characteristic classes of manifold bundles is given: for \(W_g = W_g^{2n} = \#^g S^n \times S^n\) such that \(2 \leq g \leq 2n-4\) and \(n\) is even, it is shown that the topological diffeomorphism group \(\text{Diff}(W_g)\) has finite-index subgroups whose rational cohomology in degree \(g\) is arbitrarily large. In a separate appendix written by Manuel Krannich a related result is proven: let \(\text{Diff}^{\Gamma}(W_g) \leq \text{Diff}(W_g)\) be the preimage of an arbitrary finite-index subgroup \(\Gamma\) of the image of \(\pi_0 \text{Diff}(W_g) \to \text{Aut}(H_n(W_g), \lambda)\), where \(\lambda\) is the \((-1)^n\)-symmetric intersection form on the middle homology of the manifold \(W_g\). Then for any \(n \ge 3\) and independently of its parity, the canonical map \(H^{\ast}(B\Gamma;\mathbb Q) \to H^{\ast}(B\text{Diff}^{\Gamma}_{\partial}(W_{g} \backslash D^{2n});\mathbb Q)\) is injective in a specified range of degrees growing with \(n\). The proof is built upon the higher-dimensional analogue of the Madsen-Weiss theorem that was proven by \textit{S. Galatius} and \textit{O. Randal-Williams} [Acta Math. 212, No. 2, 257--377 (2014; Zbl 1377.55012)] combined with related work by \textit{A. Berglund} and \textit{I. Madsen} [Acta Math. 224, No. 1, 67--185 (2020; Zbl 1441.57033)].