Equivariant L-theory. I (Q912437)

The authors provide a new definition of G-equivariant surgery groups with better formal properties than previous definitions, and they calculate the equivariant group in terms of usual L-groups in special cases. The main new feature in their presentation is the systematic use of groupoids with G actions, and the concept of fibre transport (of G-bundles). This makes possible a definition of equivariant L-groups much in the spirit of C. T. C. Wall's book, Chapter 9. The surgery groups consist of bordism classes of degree one G-maps f: \(M\to N\) covered by a G-bundle map \(\hat f:\) TM\(\oplus {\mathbb{R}}^ k\to \xi\) together with a certain map from N into a reference space R which, roughly speaking, captures the first Stiefel-Whitney class of \(\xi\) and TN. These groups correspond to Wall's \(L^ 1_*n\) group consisting of unrestricted objects. The authors prove an \(L^ 1_*-L^ 2_*\) result, which shows that their groups are isomorphic to groups of restricted objects. Furthermore, they show that a \(\pi\)-\(\pi\) theorem in the sense of Chapter 3 of Wall's book holds for their surgery problems. The authors compare their bundle data with those used by Dovermann-Petrie and Dovermann-Rothenberg. A more extensive comparison of this new equivariant surgery theory with all kinds of other equivariant surgery theories has been given in a book by the reviewer and \textit{R. Schultz} [Equivariant surgery theories and their periodicity properties (Lect. Notes Math. 1443, 1990)].