A note on the characteristic rank of null-cobordant manifolds (Q2448956)

The characteristic rank of a smooth closed connected manifold of dimension \(d\) is the largest integer \(k\), \(0 \leq k \leq d\), such that each cohomology class from \(H^j(M, \mathbb Z_2)\) with \(j \leq k\) can be expressed as a polynomial in the Stiefel-Whitney classes of \(M\). The authors give an upper bound for the characteristic rank of null-cobordant manifolds and they show that the bound is sharp for certain Grassmannians.