Flat circle bundles, pullbacks, and the circle made discrete (Q2368472)

Let \(G=S^1\), the circle group. A principal \(G\)-bundle \(\xi : G \to P \to X\) is said to be flat if its classifying map \(\kappa : X \to BG\) is factorized as \(Bi\circ\tilde{\kappa} : X \to BG_d \to BG\) up to homotopy where \(G_d\) denotes the group \(G\) with the discrete topology and \(i : G_d \to G\) the identity map. Since \(BG=K({\mathbb Z}; 2)\) in the present case, the usual inclusion \({\mathbb Z} \subset {\mathbb R}_d\) induces a map \(BG \to K({\mathbb R}_d; 2)\), so that by composing this with \(\kappa\) one obtains an element \(e(\xi)\) of \(H^2(X; {\mathbb R}_d)\), called the real Euler class of \(\xi\). Then it holds that \(e(\xi)\) is zero if and only if \(\xi\) is flat. The standard proofs of this theorem use either sheaf-theoretic arguments as taken by \textit{F. Kamber} and \textit{Ph. Tondeur} [Am. J. Math. 89, 857-886 (1967; Zbl 0164.53704)] or the differential geometric machinery of Chern-Weil theory discussed by, e.g., \textit{S. Morita} [Geometry of Characteristic Classes, Translations of Mathematical Monographs. Iwanami Series in Modern Mathematics. 199. Providence, RI: American Mathematical Society (AMS). (2001; Zbl 0976.57026)]. In this paper the authors present an intelligible topological proof which relies only on the notions of pullback and classifying map and the homological algebra surrounding these concepts. In addition they note that the method employed, together with the above theorem, is useful in considering the question of whether total spaces of vector bundles over nonnegatively curved manifolds also carry metrics of nonnegative sectional curvature. Given is an interesting example which illustrates this.