On the equivariant cohomology of rotation groups and Stiefel manifolds (Q664696)

In this paper the author computes the cohomology of the special orthogonal groups and Stiefel manifolds with \(\mathbb Z_2\) actions. He introduces an equivariant cell structure on \(SO(p,q)\), the group of rotations of \(p\)-dimensional Euclidean space endowed with an action of \(\mathbb Z_2\), and uses this cell structure to determine the cohomology of \(SO(p,q)\) as an algebra over the cohomology of a point with constant \(\mathbb Z_2\) Mackey functor coefficients. He also introduces an equivariant cell structure on \(V_q (\mathbb R^{p,q})\), the Stiefel manifold of \(q\)-frames in the \(\mathbb Z_2\) representation space \(\mathbb R^{p,q}\) with action inherited from \(\mathbb R^{p,q}\). This cell structure is compatible with the one of \(SO(p,q)\) and the cohomology algebra structure of \(V_q (\mathbb R^{p,q})\) is deduced from that of \(SO(p,q)\).