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Christopher L. Douglas

Publications and source records attributed to Christopher L. Douglas.

24 records · Page 2Linked to original sources

Homological obstructions to string orientations

We observe that the Poincare duality isomorphism for a string manifold is an isomorphism of modules over the subalgebra A(2) of the modulo 2 Steenrod algebra. In particular, the pattern of the operations Sq^1, Sq^2, and Sq^4 on the cohomology of a string manifold has a symmetry around the middle dimension. We characterize this kind of cohomology operation duality in term of the annihilator of the Thom class of the negative tangent bundle, and in terms of the vanishing of top-degree cohomology operations. We also indicate how the existence of such an operation-preserving duality implies the integrality of certain polynomials in the Pontryagin classes of the manifold.

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On the Structure of the Fusion Ideal

We prove that there is a finite level-independent bound on the number of relations defining the fusion ring of positive energy representations of the loop group of a simple, simply connected Lie group. As an illustration, we compute the fusion ring of $G_2$ at all levels.

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Higher topological cyclic homology and the Segal conjecture for tori

We investigate higher topological cyclic homology as an approach to studying chromatic phenomena in homotopy theory. Higher topological cyclic homology is constructed from the fixed points of a version of topological Hochschild homology based on the n-dimensional torus, and we propose it as a computationally tractable cousin of n-fold iterated algebraic K-theory. The fixed points of toral topological Hochschild homology are related to one another by restriction and Frobenius operators. We introduce two additional families of operators on fixed points, the Verschiebung, indexed on self-isogenies of the n-torus, and the differentials, indexed on n-vectors. We give a detailed analysis of the relations among the restriction, Frobenius, Verschiebung, and differentials, producing a higher analog of the structure Hesselholt and Madsen described for 1-dimensional topological cyclic homology. We calculate two important pieces of higher topological cyclic homology, namely topological restriction homology and topological Frobenius homology, for the sphere spectrum. The latter computation allows us to establish the Segal conjecture for the torus, which is to say to completely compute the cohomotopy type of the classifying space of the torus.

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On the Twisted K-Homology of Simple Lie Groups

We prove that the twisted K-homology of a simply connected simple Lie group G of rank n is an exterior algebra on n-1 generators tensor a cyclic group. We give a detailed description of the order of this cyclic group in terms of the dimensions of irreducible representations of G and show that the congruences determining this cyclic order lift along the twisted index map to relations in the twisted Spin-c bordism group of G.

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Twisted Parametrized Stable Homotopy Theory

We introduce a framework, twisted parametrized stable homotopy theory, for describing semi-infinite homotopy types. A twisted parametrized spectrum is a section of a bundle whose fibre is the category of spectra. We define these bundles in terms of modules over a stack of parametrized spectra and in terms of diagrams of simplicial categories. We present a classification of bundles of categories of spectra and of the associated twisted parametrized spectra. Though twisted parametrized spectra do not have global homotopy types and therefore do not have generalized homology invariants in the usual sense, they do admit generalized-homology-type invariants for certain commutative ring spectra. We describe this invariant theory and in particular note that under mild hypotheses, a twisted parametrized spectrum will have cyclically graded homology invariants and will also have K-theory and complex bordism invariants, as expected for a Floer or semi-infinite homotopy type. We discuss the association of a twist of parametrized homotopy theory to a polarized infinite-dimensional manifold and present a conjectural, explicit realization of this twist in terms of parametrized semi-infinitely indexed spectra.

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