On the cohomology ring and upper characteristic rank of Grassmannian of oriented 3-planes (Q2173523)

In this paper the authors give an almost complete description of the mod \(2\) cohomology algebra \(H^*(\widetilde G_{n,3};\mathbb Z_2)\) of the Grassmann manifold \(\widetilde G_{n,3}\) of oriented \(3\)-planes in \(\mathbb R^n\). They investigate the degrees in which indecomposable classes occur (a class \(x\in H^*(\widetilde G_{n,3};\mathbb Z_2)\) is \textit{decomposable} if it can be written as a sum \(\sum_ia_ib_i\), where \(a_i,b_i\in H^*(\widetilde G_{n,3};\mathbb Z_2)\) are classes of positive degree) and detect all of them. These degrees are: \(2,3,2^t-1\) if \(n=2^t\); \(2,3,2^t-4\) if \(2^t-3\leq n\leq2^t-1\); and \(2,3,3n-2^t-1,2^t-4\) if \(2^{t-1}<n\leq2^t-4\). Moreover, it is shown that there is exactly one indecomposable class (up to addition of a decomposable one) in each of the listed degrees (in the respective cases). The obtained description of \(H^*(\widetilde G_{n,3};\mathbb Z_2)\) is applied to establish some new facts about the \(\mathbb Z_2\)-cup-length of \(\widetilde G_{n,3}\). Another application concerns the characteristic ranks of vector bundles over this manifold. A result in this context is that, for \(n\geq8\), the upper characteristic rank of \(\widetilde G_{n,3}\) (i.e., the maximum of characteristic rank of \(\xi\), where \(\xi\) varies over vector bundles over \(\widetilde G_{n,3}\)) equals the characteristic rank of the tautological bundle \(\widetilde\gamma_{n,3}\) over \(\widetilde G_{n,3}\).