Relations among characteristic classes of manifold bundles (Q2356959)

Let \(M\) be an oriented smooth closed connected manifold and let \(\mathrm{Diff}(M)\) be the topological group of orientation preserving diffeomorphisms of \(M\) with the \(C^\infty\) topology. An oriented \textit{manifold bundle} is a bundle \(E \to B\) with fibre \(M\) and structure group \(\mathrm{Diff}(M)\). The author is mostly concerned with the case in which \(M=M_g\) is the connected sum of \(g\) copies of \(S^d \times S^d\). The bar construction can be used to construct the space \(B\mathrm{Diff}(M)\). For any characteristic class \(p \in H^{r+2d}(\mathrm{BSO}_{2d};\mathbb Q)\) of vector bundles the author defines a generalized Miller-Morita-Mumford (MMM) class \(\kappa_p \in H^*(B\mathrm{Diff}(M);\mathbb Q)\). Let \(\mathcal S \subset H^*(\mathrm{BSO}_{2d};\mathbb Q) = \mathbb Q[p_1,\dots,p_{d-1},e]\) consist of the monomials in the Pontrjagin and the Euler classes. For each such monomial there is a corresponding MMM class in \(H^*(\mathrm{BSO}_{2d};\mathbb Q)\) which gives rise to a map \[ \mathcal R_d: \mathbb Q[\kappa_p;p\in \mathcal S] \longrightarrow H^*(B\mathrm{Diff}(M_g); \mathbb Q). \] Theorem. The image of \(\mathcal R_d\) is finitely generated as a \(\mathbb Q\)-algebra when \(d\) is odd and \(g>1\). This tells us that the infinitely many classes in \(\mathcal S\) are algebraically generated by a finite subset. These relations generalize the ones found by \textit{O. Randal-Williams} [Adv. Math. 231, No. 3--4, 1773--1785 (2012; Zbl 1251.14016)]. The results are in contrast with the fact that there are no algebraic relations among these classes in a range of cohomological degrees that grows linearly with \(g\).