Bredon-Poincaré duality groups. (Q471847)

Davis and Leary introduced the concept of Bredon-Poincaré duality for groups. Their definition generalises Poincaré duality for groups and was motivated by groups, \(G\), with cocompact manifold models, \(M\), for \(\underline{\text E}G\), such that \(M^H\) is a contractible submanifold for all finite subgroups, \(H\), of \(G\). The author reviews the definitions of these concepts as well as finiteness conditions in Bredon cohomology. The main part of this well-written paper is devoted to ``several sources of examples and constructions of these Bredon-Poincaré duality groups.'' The author uses ``the equivariant reflection group trick of Davis and Leary to construct examples of Bredon-Poincaré duality groups arising from actions on manifolds, \(M\), where the dimensions of the submanifolds \(M^H\) are specified.'' Other examples include smooth actions on manifolds, a counterexample to the generalised \(\text{PD}^n\) conjecture, actions on \(R\)-homology manifolds and one relator groups. The section on Bredon duality and Bredon-Poincaré duality groups in low dimensions provides a complete classification in dimension 0, a partial classification in dimension 1 and some discussion of the situation in dimension 2. The author investigates the behaviour of Bredon duality groups with respect to extensions and shows that Bredon (respectively Bredon-Poincaré) duality is preserved under products. The paper considers graphs of Bredon-Poincaré duality groups and, finally, turns to the question whether it is possible to define Bredon-Poincaré duality groups in terms of Bredon cohomology only. While the question remains open, the author provides an example how not to do it.