The characteristic rank and cup-length in oriented Grassmann manifolds (Q902246)

The characteristic rank of the canonical oriented \(k\)-plane bundle over the oriented Grassmannian \(\tilde G_{n, k}\) is studied in the paper. The exact values for \(k=3, 4\) and \(n=2^t-i\) where \(i\in\{0, 1, 2, 3\}\) are obtained while in the other cases new lower bounds are established and proved. Those results are used for determining the \(\mathbb{Z}_2\)-cup length of \(\tilde G_{n, k}\) for \(k=3\) and \(n=2^t\). The improvement of the existing upper bounds in the other cases are done in the article. The proofs of technical results are carefully and reader friendly exposed.