On the cohomology ring and upper characteristic rank of Grassmannian of oriented 3-planes

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Publication:2173523



Abstract: In this paper we study the mod 2 cohomology ring of the Grasmannian widetildeGn,3 of oriented 3-planes in mathbbRn. We determine the degrees of the indecomposable elements in the cohomology ring. We also obtain an almost complete description of the cohomology ring. This partial description allows us to provide lower and upper bounds on the cup length of widetildeGn,3. As another application, we show that the upper characteristic rank of widetildeGn,3 equals the characteristic rank of widetildegamman,3, the oriented tautological bundle over widetildeGn,3.


In this paper the authors give an almost complete description of the mod \(2\) cohomology algebra \(H^*(\widetilde G_{n,3};\mathbb Z_2)\) of the Grassmann manifold \(\widetilde G_{n,3}\) of oriented \(3\)-planes in \(\mathbb R^n\). They investigate the degrees in which indecomposable classes occur (a class \(x\in H^*(\widetilde G_{n,3};\mathbb Z_2)\) is \textit{decomposable} if it can be written as a sum \(\sum_ia_ib_i\), where \(a_i,b_i\in H^*(\widetilde G_{n,3};\mathbb Z_2)\) are classes of positive degree) and detect all of them. These degrees are: \(2,3,2^t-1\) if \(n=2^t\); \(2,3,2^t-4\) if \(2^t-3\leq n\leq2^t-1\); and \(2,3,3n-2^t-1,2^t-4\) if \(2^{t-1}<n\leq2^t-4\). Moreover, it is shown that there is exactly one indecomposable class (up to addition of a decomposable one) in each of the listed degrees (in the respective cases). The obtained description of \(H^*(\widetilde G_{n,3};\mathbb Z_2)\) is applied to establish some new facts about the \(\mathbb Z_2\)-cup-length of \(\widetilde G_{n,3}\). Another application concerns the characteristic ranks of vector bundles over this manifold. A result in this context is that, for \(n\geq8\), the upper characteristic rank of \(\widetilde G_{n,3}\) (i.e., the maximum of characteristic rank of \(\xi\), where \(\xi\) varies over vector bundles over \(\widetilde G_{n,3}\)) equals the characteristic rank of the tautological bundle \(\widetilde\gamma_{n,3}\) over \(\widetilde G_{n,3}\).











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