Vanishing of top equivariant Chern classes of regular embeddings (Q2493481)

Let \(G\) be a topological group and let \(E_G\rightarrow B_G\) be the universal \(G\)-bundle on \(B_G\), the classifying space of \(G\). Let \(X\) be a \(G\)-space and let \(F\rightarrow X\) be a \(G\)-equivariant vector bundle on \(X\). Define the \(i\)-th equivariant Chern class \(c_i^G(F)=c_i(E_G\times ^G F)\in \text{H}^{2i}_G(X)=\text{H}^{2i}(E_G\times ^G X,\mathbb{Q})\) of the bundle \(F\). The main result of the paper is the following: Assume \(G\) is a connected affine algebraic group over the complex numbers and \(X\) is a complex regular \(G\)-variety with an open dense orbit \(U\subseteq X\) where \(D=X-U\) is a strictly normal crossing divisor. Pick a point \(x\) in \(U\) and let \(H\subseteq G\) be the isotropy group of \(x\). Then the equivariant Chern-class \(c_i^G(\Omega^1_X(\log D))\) vanish when \(i>\dim X-\text{rk }G-\text{rk }H.\) The motivation for this work comes from the study of a higher rank generalization of the Newstead-Ramanan conjecture on the Chern class of the tangent bundle on the moduli space of stable bundles of rank \(r\) and degree \(d\) on a curve of genus \(g\).