Non-trivial higher Massey products in moment-angle complexes (Q2037614)

Massey products are a type of cohomology operations that in their basic form are simply the usual cup product. Higher Massey products have been studied in a variety of subjects, including differential topology, commutative algebra, homotopy theory, and cohomology of groups. In general however Massey products are very hard to compute and, like any other type of higher operations, involve indeterminacy, which makes it even more difficult to decide whether an operation is trivial or not. Moment angle complexes are topological spaces obtained by gluing together products of discs and circles according to a recipe encoded in a finite simplicial complex. The cohomology of moment angle complexes is known to be a Tor algebra defined combinatorially from the underlying simplicial complex. Moment angle complexes and related objects have been the subject of intensive study in the past two decades. The paper under review presents a thorough study of a general approach to the construction of nontrivial Massey products in the cohomology of moment angle complexes. For a simplicial complex \(\mathcal{K}\) let \(\mathcal{Z}_\mathcal{K}\) denote the corresponding moment angle complex. The main theorem gives for any positive integer \(1\le i\le n\) and a corresponding sequence of simplicial complexes \(\mathcal{K}^i\) that are not simplices, a simplicial complex \(\mathcal{K}\) constructed systematically as a certain modification of the join of the \(\mathcal{K}^i\), such that there is a nontrivial Massey product in \(H^*(\mathcal{Z}_\mathcal{K})\). Further investigation of the construction produces new examples of nontrivial Massey products and a method of constructing new non-trivial Massey products out of known examples, thus producing infinite families of Massey products. The method presented in the paper is the first systematic method for producing Massey products of such scale and generality. It also paves the way to further generalisation.