English

Cobordism of nested manifolds

Algebraic Topology 2025-12-23 v1 Geometric Topology

Abstract

We study cobordisms of nested manifolds, which are manifolds together with embedded submanifolds, which can themselves have embedded submanifolds, etc. We identify a nested analog of the Pontryagin-Thom construction. Moreover, when the highest-dimensional manifold has a normal bundle with a framed direction, we find spaces homotopy equivalent to the nested Pontryagin-Thom spaces that relate nested manifolds up to cobordism with links up to cobordism. This gives rise to nested cobordism invariants coming from previously studied cobordism invariants of links. In addition, we provide an alternative proof of a result by Wall about the splitting of the stable nested cobordism groups.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2512.18277,
  title  = {Cobordism of nested manifolds},
  author = {Alba Sendón Blanco},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2512.18277},
  year   = {2025}
}

Comments

23 pages, 7 figures. Comments welcome!