A homotopy classification of certain 7-manifolds (Q4337960)

Wallach spaces are the homogeneous spaces which are the quotients of SU(3) by the \(S^1\) subgroups given by diagonal matrices with \(z^n\), \(z^m\), \(z^{-m-n}\) down the diagonal. Here \(n\) and \(m\) are relatively prime. These spaces provide examples of homeomorphic, but not diffeomorphic, manifolds. M. Kreck and S. Stolz discovered these examples, and they went on to give necessary and sufficient conditions on \(n\) and \(m\) for two Wallach spaces to be homeomorphic. The author's main theorem gives necessary and sufficient conditions for two Wallach spaces to be homotopy equivalent: \[ r:= n^2+ nm+ m^2 \text{ is the same and} \tag{1} \] \[ nm(n+m) \equiv\pm \widetilde n\widetilde m(\widetilde n+ \widetilde m) \bmod r. \tag{2} \] The author studies the homotopy types of a general class of simply connected compact manifolds with the same cohomology ring structure as Wallach spaces. Several interesting subclasses of these manifolds are known. For some of them, the author can give classifications of their homotopy types.