A note on the Stiefel-Whitney classes of representations of exceptional Lie groups (Q2574038)

One considers the following real representations of the compact connected simple exceptional Lie groups of rank \(\ell\) \((\ell= 6,7,8)\): \[ \begin{aligned} \rho_6:E_6 &\hookrightarrow U(27)\to SO(54),\\ \rho_7: E_7 &\hookrightarrow U(56)\to SO(112),\\ \rho_7': E_7 &\to SO(133),\\ \rho_8: E_8 &\to SO(248),\end{aligned} \] where \(\rho_7'\) and \(\rho_8\) are the adjoint representations. The main result is: Theorem 1. \(w_{2^{\ell-1}}(\rho_\ell)\) and \(w_{64}(\rho_7')\) are not decomposable in \(H^*(BE_\ell)\). \(H^*(BE_\ell)\) denotes the \(\text{mod\,}2\) cohomology ring and \(w\) are the Stiefel-Whitney classes.