Obstruction theory on 7-manifolds

DOI10.1007/S00229-019-01165-2MaRDI QIDQ2004020zbMATH OpenOpenAlexFDO

Authors Martin Čadek, Tomáš Salač, Michael C. Crabb

Publication date 14 October 2020

Published in Manuscripta Mathematica (Search for Journal in Brave)

Full work available at URL https://arxiv.org/abs/1811.04666

zbMATH Keywords

structure groupsvector bundles

Mathematics Subject Classification ID

Sphere bundles and vector bundles in algebraic topology (55R25) Equivariant operations and obstructions in algebraic topology (55S91) Algebraic topology on manifolds and differential topology (57R19)

Abstract: This paper gives a uniform, self-contained and direct approach to a variety of obstruction-theoretic problems on manifolds of dimension 7 and 6. We give necessary and sufficient cohomological criteria for the existence of various G-structures on vector bundles over such manifolds especially using low dimensional representations of the group U(2).

Review text

It is a classical problem in topology to determine obstructions for reducing the structure group of a vector bundle. The authors continue their study of such problems in the context of manifolds of dimension 6 or 7. In this paper the authors consider a connected, closed, smooth \(\text{spin}^c\)-manifold of dimension 6 or 7 and \(m\)-dimensional vector bundles \(\xi\) over \(M\) admitting a \(\text{spin}^c\)-structure. For various homomorphisms \(\rho: G \rightarrow \text{SO}(m)\) the authors consider the problem of reducing the structure group of \(\xi\) from \(\text{SO}(m)\) to \(G\) using the representation \(\rho\). The goal is to obtain necessary and sufficient conditions for such a reduction depending on the cohomology of \(M\) and the characteristic classes of the vector bundle \(\xi\). The following is the main result of the paper (Theorem 1.1 in the paper): \textbf{Theorem 1.1} Let \(\xi\) be a 7-dimensional vector bundle with \(w_1(\xi) = 0\) and \(w_2(\xi) = 0\) over a 7-dimensional spin manifold \(M\). Then the structure group of \(\xi\) reduces from \(\text{Spin}(7)\) to \(\text{Sp}(1)\) through \(\rho\) if and only if the spin characteristic class \(q_1(\xi) \in H^4(M;\mathbb{Z})\) is divisible by (i) 0, (ii) 1, (iii) 2, (iv) 3, (v) 4, (vi) 10, (vii) 28. A nice corollary of this theorem is the statement that for any 7-dimensional spin vector bundle \(\xi\) over a spin 7-manifold the structure group of the 8-dimensional bundle, \(\mathbb{R}\oplus \xi\) reduces to \(G_2\) since the vector bundle admits the structure of a bundle of Cayley algebras.

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Cites work

• K-theory obstructions to the existence of vector fields
• Multisymplectic 3-forms on 7-dimensional manifolds
• Obstruction theory on 8-manifolds
• On the classification of oriented 3-plane bundles over a 6-complex
• On the gauge orbit types for theories with classical compact gauge group
• On the Stiefel-Whitney Classes of a Manifold. II
• On the topology and the geometry of SO(3)-manifolds
• On theKO_ℤ/2-Euler class, I
• SO(3)-structures on 8-manifolds
• The classification of orientable vector bundles over CW-complexes of small dimension
• Vector fields on low dimensional manifolds
• Vector fields with finite singularities
• Vector-Bundle Monomorphisms with Finite Singularities

Cited in

(2)

• G-STRUCTURES ON SPHERES
• Obstruction theory on 8-manifolds

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