Local coefficients and Euler class groups (Q848523)

Euler class groups have been a subject of intense study in the recent past, with a view to obtain more subtle invariants associated to Noetherian rings than one could using the theory of Chow groups for affine rings over an algebraically closed field [see e.g. \textit{S. M. Bhatwadekar} and \textit{R. Sridharan}, Compos. Math. 122, No. 2, 183--222 (2000; Zbl 0999.13007)]. This theory as suggested by M.~V.~Nori is closely related to topological obstruction theory and the authors make some of these connections to topology more precise and explicit in the article under review. For example, they establish an isomorphism between the Euler class group \(E(\mathbb{R}(X),L)\) for a real smooth affine variety \(X\) and the \(0\)-th homology group \(H_0(M_c;\mathcal{G})\) with local coefficients in a bundle \(\mathcal{G}\) constructed from the line bundle \(\mathcal{L}\) over \(M\) corresponding to the orientation rank 1 projective module \(L\), where \(M_c\) is the compact part of the manifold \(M\) of real points of \(X\).