Higher Todd classes and holomorphic group actions (Q866468)

The paper deals with an analogue of the Novikov conjecture for algebraic manifolds. Similarly to the signature of a manifold, the arithmetic genus \(p_a(M)\) of a projective algebraic manifold \(M\) can be expressed in terms of some polynomial, namely the Todd class of \(M\): \(p_a(M)=\langle \text{Td}(M),[M]\rangle\). In the presence of the fundamental group \(\pi=\pi_1(M)\) one can follow Novikov in considering `polarizations' of \(M\), i.e. maps \(f:M\to B\pi\) in order to obtain higher Todd genera \(\langle f^*(\alpha)\cup \text{Td}(M),[M]\rangle\), where \(\alpha\in H^*(B\pi;\mathbb Q)\). J. Rosenberg, among others, has conjectured that higher Todd genera are birational invariants and has verified this conjecture for many groups \(\pi\). The authors prove this conjecture in general. They also discuss some phenomena showing that in the algebraic geometric setting the Novikov philosophy naturally includes non-birational mappings.