Projective bundles over small covers and the bundle triviality problem (Q302319)

A small cover is a real version of a quasitoric manifold: it is a compact \(n\)-dimensional manifold \(M\) with a locally standard action of \(\mathbb Z_2^n\) whose orbit space is a simple convex \(n\)-dimensional polytope. In this paper the authors consider projectivizations of real vector bundles over small covers. Their first theorem concerns the question when the total space of such a real projective bundle \(P(\xi)\) is again a small cover, with an action for which the bundle \(P(\xi)\to M\) becomes an equivariant bundle. They show that this is the case if and only if the vector bundle \(\xi\) is the direct sum of equivariant line bundles. For real projective bundles satisfying this condition, over two-dimensional small covers, they further show that one can obtain them all as a fiber sum of real projective bundles over the real projective plane and \(T^2\). Finally, they investigate for which \(n\) the bundle over \(\mathbb RP^n\) given by the projectivization of the sum of the tautological line bundle and the tangent bundle is trivial.