Homotopy classification of f-structures on orientable 3-manifolds (Q911063)

An f-structure on a \(C^{\infty}\) manifold M is a nonvanishing tensor field of type (1,1) such that \(f^ 3+f=0\). The authors prove the following result: Let M be a connected orientable manifold of dimension 3. The homotopy classes of f-structures on M (they have given before a precise meaning of this concept) are in one-to-one-maps correspondence with the homotopy classes of continuous maps from M to \(S^ 2\). If \({\mathcal Y}(M)\) denotes the set of homotopy classes of f-structures on M, there exists a surjective map of sets \(p: {\mathcal Y}(M)\to H^ 2(M,{\mathbb{Z}})\) whose fibre at a point u of \(H^ 2(M,{\mathbb{Z}})\) is\(H^ 3(M,{\mathbb{Z}})/2u \cup H^ 1(M,{\mathbb{Z}}),\) where \(\cup\) denotes the cup- product in the integer cohomology ring of M.