arXiv subjects
Publications and source records attributed to Ian Hambleton.
This is a survey about finite group actions on CW-complexes and related topics, primarily based on our joint work. The main applications are to finite $G$-CW-complexes which are homotopy equivalent to spheres. We have tried to give a fairly short overview of the extensive literature in this area, and we apologize in advance for our oversights and omissions.
We complete the description of surgery obstructions up to homotopy equivalence for closed oriented manifolds with finite fundamental group. New examples are presented of non-trivial obstructions for Arf invariant product formulas in codimensions $\geq 4$, which give counterexamples to the well-known ''Oozing Conjecture'' from the 1980's.
Kreck and Schafer produced the first examples of stably diffeomorphic closed smooth 4-manifolds which are not homotopy equivalent. They were constructed by applying the doubling construction to 2-complexes over certain finite abelian groups of odd order. By extending their methods, we formulate a new homotopy invariant on the class of 4-manifolds arising as doubles of 2-complexes with finite fundamental group. As an application we show that, for any $k \ge 2$, there exist a family of $k$ closed smooth 4-manifolds which are all stably diffeomorphic but are pairwise not homotopy equivalent.
Given a 4-manifold with a homologically trivial and locally-linear cyclic group action, we obtain necessary and sufficient conditions for the existence of equivariant bundles. The conditions are derived from the twisted signature formula and are in the form of congruence relations between the fixed point data and the isotropy representations.
We introduce a new stable range invariant for the classification of closed, oriented topological $4$-manifolds (up to $s$-cobordism), after stabilization by connected sum with a uniformly bounded number of copies of $S^2\times S^2$.
We consider the Euler characteristics $\chi(M)$ of closed orientable topological $2n$-manifolds with $(n-1)$-connected universal cover and a given fundamental group $G$ of type $F_n$. We define $q_{2n}(G)$, a generalized version of the Hausmann-Weinberger invariant for 4-manifolds, as the minimal value of $(-1)^n\chi (M)$. For all $n\geq 2$, we establish a strengthened and extended version of their estimates, in terms of explicit cohomological invariants of $G$. As an application we obtain new restrictions for non-abelian finite groups arising as fundamental groups of rational homology 4-spheres.
Let M be a closed, connected, orientable topological 4-manifold, and G be a finite group acting topologically and locally linearly on M. In this paper we investigate the Borel spectral sequence for the G-equivariant cohomology of M, and establish new bounds on the rank of G for homologically trivial actions with discrete singular set.
Taubes' gluing theorems establish the existence of ASD connections on closed, oriented 4-manifolds. We extend these gluing results to the mASD connections of Morgan-Mrowka-Ruberman on oriented 4-manifolds with cylindrical ends. As a corollary, we obtain an ASD-existence result in the presence of degenerate asymptotic flat connections.
We show that standard cyclic actions on Brieskorn homology 3-spheres with non-empty fixed set do not extend smoothly to any contractible smooth 4-manifold it may bound. The quotient of any such extension would be an acyclic $4$-manifold with boundary a related Brieskorn homology sphere. We briefly discuss well known invariants of homology spheres that obstruct acyclic bounding 4-manifolds, and then use a method based on equivariant Yang-Mills moduli spaces to rule out extensions of the actions.
We use methods from the cohomology of groups to describe the finite groups which can act freely and homologically trivially on closed 3-manifolds which are rational homology spheres.
We show that the Spivak normal fibration of an orientable 4-dimensional Poincaré complex has a vector bundle reduction.
We classify closed, topological spin$^+$ 4-manifolds with fundamental group $π$ of cohomological dimension $\leq 3$ (up to s-cobordism), after stabilization by connected sum with at most $b_3(π)$ copies of $S^2\times S^2$. In general we must also assume that $π$ also satisfies certain K-theory and assembly map conditions. Examples for which these conditions hold include the torsion-free fundamental groups of 3-manifolds and all right-angled Artin groups whose defining graphs have no 4-cliques.
We consider closed topological 4-manifolds $M$ with universal cover ${S^2\times{S^2}}$ and Euler characteristic $\chi(M) = 1$. All such manifolds with $\pi=\pi_1(M)\cong {\mathbb Z}/4$ are homotopy equivalent. In this case, we show that there are four homeomorphism types, and propose a candidate for a smooth example which is not homeomorphic to the geometric quotient. If $\pi\cong {\mathbb Z}/2 \times {\mathbb Z}/2$, we show that there are three homotopy types (and between 6 and 24 homeomorphism types).
If a finite group $G$ is isomorphic to a subgroup of $SO(3)$, then $G$ has the D2-property. Let $X$ be a finite complex satisfying Wall's D2-conditions. If $π_1(X)=G$ is finite, and $χ(X) \geq 1-Def(G)$, then $X \vee S^2$ is simple homotopy equivalent to a finite $2$-complex, whose simple homotopy type depends only on $G$ and $χ(X)$.
There are known infinite families of Brieskorn homology 3-spheres which can be realized as boundaries of smooth contractible 4-manifolds. In this paper we show that free periodic actions on these Brieskorn spheres do not extend smoothly over a contractible 4-manifold. We give a new infinite family of examples in which the actions extend locally linearly but not smoothly.
The (4k+2)-dimensional Kervaire manifold is a closed, piecewise linear (PL) manifold with Kervaire invariant 1 and the same homology as the product of two (2k+1)-dimensional spheres. We show that a finite group of odd order acts freely on a Kervaire manifold if and only if it acts freely on the corresponding product of spheres. If the Kervaire manifold M is smoothable, then each smooth structure on M admits a free smooth involution. If k + 1 is not a 2-power, then the Kervaire manifold in dimension 4k+2 does not admit any free TOP involutions. Free "exotic" (PL) involutions are constructed on the Kervaire manifolds of dimensions 30, 62, and 126. Each smooth structure on the 30-dimensional Kervaire manifold admits a free Z/2 x Z/2 action.
We show that a rank two finite group G admits a finite G-CW-complex X homotopy equivalent to a sphere, with rank one prime power isotropy, if and only if G does not p'-involve Qd(p) for any odd prime p. This follows from a more general theorem which allows us to construct a finite G-CW-complex by gluing together a given G-invariant family of representations defined on the Sylow subgroups of G.
Free actions of finite groups on spheres give rise to topological spherical space forms. The existence and classification problems for space forms have a long history in the geometry and topology of manifolds. In this article, we present a survey of some of the main results and a guide to the literature.