Group cohomology with Lipschitz control and higher signatures (Q2366709)

This extraordinarily rich paper is difficult to summarize briefly. Basically the authors define a subspace \(H^*_ L(\Gamma)\) of the ordinary group cohomology with real coefficients \(H^*(\Gamma) = H^*(B \Gamma,\mathbb{R})\) for a finitely generated discrete group \(\Gamma\). The subspace is defined using families of Lipschitz contractions (with respect to the metric structure on \(\Gamma\) coming from the word-length metric) from \(\Gamma\) to finite-dimensional Euclidean spaces \(\mathbb{R}^{\mathcal N}\). The authors start by imposing an additional properness condition on these Lipschitz cohomology classes, and show that every proper Lipschitz class gives rise to a homotopy invariant higher signature, for any closed oriented manifold mapping to \(B\Gamma\). As a result one needs to know when one has \(H^*_{L,\text{pr}}(\Gamma) = H^*(\Gamma) = H^*(B\Gamma)\) for the proper Lipschitz cohomology. This happens when \(\Gamma\) is a subgroup of a general (word) hyperbolic group. The verification in this case takes 26 pages. In particular it holds when \(\Gamma\) is a discrete subgroup of the group of isometries of a complete, simply connected Riemannian manifold of nonpositive curvature or a discrete subgroup of an almost connected Lie group. The final chapter is devoted to the removal of the properness assumption. Result: Every (not necessarily proper) Lipschitz class satisfies the Novikov conjecture. In this case Lipschitz cohomology becomes functorial for any group homomorphism \(\iota: \Gamma \to G\) from a finitely generated discrete group to an almost connected topological group. In particular \(\iota^*(H^*_{\text{cont}}(G,\mathbb{R})) \subset H^*_ L(\Gamma)\) when \(G\) is locally compact and when \(G = \text{Diff}^ +(M)\) is the group of orientation preserving diffeomorphisms of a closed manifold \(M\) and \(\iota^*\) is restricted to the subring of \(H^*_{\text{cont}}(G,\mathbb{R})\) generated by Gel'fand-Fuks classes via integration along the fiber. Throughout the paper there are many examples.