Closed hyperbolic manifolds without $\text{spin}^c$ structures

Abstract

In all dimensions $n \ge 5$, we prove the existence of closed orientable hyperbolic manifolds that do not admit any $\text{spin}^c$ structure, and in fact we show that there are infinitely many commensurability classes of such manifolds. These manifolds all have non-vanishing third Stiefel--Whitney class $w_3$ and are all arithmetic of simplest type. More generally, we show that for each $k \ge 1$ and $n \ge 4k+1$, there exist infinitely many commensurability classes of closed orientable hyperbolic $n$-manifolds $M$ with $w_{4k-1}(M) \ne 0$.