Cohomological rigidity for Fano Bott manifolds (Q2672674)

Toric manifolds are compact, smooth toric varieties. The cohomology rigidity problem in toric topology asks whether the homeomorphic or diffeomorphic types of toric manifolds are determined by their integral cohomology rings. A Bott manifold is the total space of a sequence of~\(\mathbb{C} P^1\)-bundles starting with a point, where each \(\mathbb{C} P^1\)-bundle is the projectivization of a Whitney sum of two complex line bundles. A Bott manifold \(X\) is a toric manifold whose integral cohomology ring can be described using an upper triangular matrix \(A(X)\), called a Bott matrix. Two Bott matrices are Bott equivalent if they can be transformed by three certain matrix operations. A Bott manifold is Fano if its anti-canonical divisor is ample. In this paper, the authors prove that Fano Bott manifolds are cohomologically rigid. To achieve this goal, the authors introduce the notion of signed rooted forests and establish a correspondence between a Fano Bott manifold \(X\) and a signed rooted forest \(T_X\). Relying on such correspondence, the authors prove that the following statements are equivalent: \begin{itemize} \item[1.] two Fano Bott manifolds \(X\) and \(X'\) are diffeomorphic; \item[2.] the associated matrices \(A(X)\) and \(A(X')\) are Fano Bott equivalent; \item[3.] \(H^*(X)\) and \(H^*(X')\) are isomorphic as graded rings; \item[4.] the associated signed rooted forests \(T_X\) and \(T_{X'}\) have equivalent signs by exchanging the signs assigned to the edges adjacent to the roots if necessary. \end{itemize}