Endomorphisms of real Grassmannians that commute with Steenrod squares (Q6050062)

``Let \(G_{k,n}\) denote the Grassmann manifold of \(k\)-dimensional subspaces in \(\mathbb R^{n+k}\). To study properties of a continuous map \(f: G_{l,m}\rightarrow G_{l',m'}\) one may consider the map \(f^* : H^* (G_{l,m}, \mathbb Z_2 )\rightarrow H^*(G_{l',m'}, \mathbb Z_2)\). Then: (1) \(f^*\) is a homomorphism. (2) \(f^*\) commutes with Steenrod squares. It turned out that for various \((l,m,l',m')\) conditions (1) and (2) were enough to obtain a classification of maps \(f^\ast\) that was sufficient to conclude that all continuous map \(f: G_{l,m}\rightarrow G_{l',m'}\) have some specific properties.'' ``Let \(\gamma_{k,n}\) be the tautological \(k\)-dimensional vector bundle over \(G_{k,n}\), and let \(w_i\) be the \(i\)-th Stiefel-Whitney class of \(\gamma_{k,n},\, 1\leq k\leq n\). By Borel's description, \(H^\ast (G_{k,n}; \mathbb Z_2)\) is a polynomial algebra in \(w_1, w_2, \ldots, w_k\) over a certain ideal.'' In this paper for \(k=1,2\), the authors classify endomorphisms of \(H^\ast (G_{k,n}; \mathbb Z_2)\) that commute with Steenrod squares and such that the image of each class is a polynomial in the (nonzero) class of the first cohomology module \(H^1 (G_{k,n}; \mathbb Z_2)\).