On generalized Dold manifolds

Abstract

Let $X$ be a smooth manifold with a (smooth) involution $\sigma:X\to X$ such that $Fix(\sigma)\ne \emptyset$. We call the space $P(m,X):=\mathbb{S}^m\times X/\!\sim$ where $(v,x)\sim (-v,\sigma(x))$ a generalized Dold manifold. When $X$ is an almost complex manifold and the differential $T\sigma: TX\to TX$ is conjugate complex linear on each fibre, we obtain a formula for the Stiefel-Whitney polynomial of $P(m,X)$ when $H^1(X;\mathbb{Z}_2)=0$. We obtain results on stable parallelizability of $P(m,X)$ and a very general criterion for the (non) vanishing of the unoriented cobordism class $[P(m,X)]$ in terms of the corresponding properties for $X$. These results are applied to the case when $X$ is a complex flag manifold.