Regulators and characteristic classes of flat bundles (Q4953643)

Let \(X\) be a smooth complex algebraic variety. For a vector bundle \(E\) with a flat connection \(\nabla\), Cheeger and Simons have defined characteristic classes \({\widehat c}_p(E, \nabla) \in H^{2p-1} (X,{\mathbb C}/{\mathbb Z}(p))\), where \({\mathbb Z}(p) = (2\pi i)^p{\mathbb Z}\) (the Tate twist). A flat vector bundle has a unique algebraic structure for which the connection has regular singularities, hence one can associate to it Beilinson Chern classes \(c^B_p(E) \in H^{2p}_D(X,{\mathbb Z}(p))\). The first result of this paper is the following. Theorem. For all \(p\geq 1\), the natural map \(H^{2p-1}(X, {\mathbb C}/ {\mathbb Z}(p)) \to H^{2p}_D(X, {\mathbb Z}(p))\) maps \({\widehat c}_p(E,\nabla)\) to \(c_p^B(E)\). The authors generalise this theorem to algebraic vector bundles with a more general class of connections called \(F^1\)-connections. The analogous result for Kähler manifolds is formulated and proved. Let \(B = B GL_n({\mathbb C})^{\delta}\) denote the classifying space for the general linear group of complex \(n\times n\) matrices with discrete topology. Let \({\widehat c}_p \in H^{2p-1}(B, {\mathbb C}/{\mathbb Z}(p))\) be the universal Cheeger-Simons class (i.e. the class of the universal flat bundle). Theorem. The image of \({\widehat c}_p\) in \(H^{2p-1}(B, {\mathbb C}/{\mathbb R}(p))\) is the Borel regular element, a canonical cohomology class defined by Borel. The authors conjecture that \({\widehat c}_p\) is the Beilinson-Chern class of the universal flat bundle on \(B\), but they do not succeed in proving the conjecture. For the entire collection see [Zbl 0935.00034].