Related papers: Secondary characteristic classes of transversely h…

In this paper, we characterize the second bounded characteristic classes of foliated bundles in terms of the non-descendible quasi-morphisms on the universal covering of the structure group. As its application, we study the boundedness of…

We construct families of non-trivial universal rigid secondary classes for foliations, and then discuss their application to prove that foliations are not homotopic. An observation of Lawson about the non-triviality of the normal Pontrjagin…

In this paper we study the variability and rigidity of secondary characteristic classes which arise from flat connections on a manifold. Considering the connection as a Lie-algebra valued one-form, we study the characteristic map from Lie…

We prove a generalisation of Bott's vanishing theorem for the full transverse frame holonomy groupoid of any transversely orientable foliated manifold. As a consequence we obtain a characteristic map encoding both primary and secondary…

Making use of the extended flux homomorphism on the group of symplectomorphisms of a closed oriented surface of genus at least 2, we introduce new characteristic classes of foliated surface bundles with symplectic, equivalently…

We generalize the notion of tight geodesics in the curve complex to tight trees. We then use tight trees to construct model geometries for certain surface bundles over graphs. This extends some aspects of the combinatorial model for doubly…

The talk was done at the International Conference "Analysis, Topology and Applications", Harbin, China, 23.08.2011. Transitive Lie algebroids have specific properties that allow to look at the transitive Lie algebroid as an element of the…

We show that every subgroup of the mapping class group MCG(S) of a compact surface S is either virtually abelian or it has infinite dimensional second bounded cohomology. As an application, we give another proof of the…

Suppose $G$ is a locally solid lattice group. It is known that there are non-equivalent classes of bounded homomorphisms on $G$ which have topological structures. In this paper, our attempt is to assign lattice structures on them. More…

We show that Thurston's skinning maps of Teichmuller space have finite fibers. The proof centers around a study of two subvarieties of the SL_2(C) character variety of a surface, one associated to complex projective structures and the other…

Let $G$ be a countable group acting properly on a metric space with contracting elements and $\{H_i:1\le i\le n\}$ be a finite collection of Morse subgroups in $G$. We prove that each $H_i$ has infinite index in $G$ if and only if the…

We investigate the structure of smooth holomorphic foliations with numerically flat tangent bundles on compact K\"ahler manifolds. Extending earlier results on non-uniruled projective manifolds by the second and fourth authors, we show that…

We study characteristic classes on hyperk\"ahler manifolds with a view towards the Verbitsky component. The case of the second Chern class leads to a conditional upper bound on the second Betti number in terms of the Riemann--Roch…

We study holomorphic foliations with an affine homogeneous transverse structure. We give a friendly characterization of the case of transversely affine foliations in terms of matrix valued pairs of differential forms. This leads naturally…

Let X be an arbitrary hyperbolic geodesic metric space and let G be a countable non-elementary weakly acylindrical group of isometries of X. We show that the second bounded cohomology group of G with real coefficients or with coefficients…

What are called secondary characteristic classes in Chern-Weil theory are a refinement of ordinary characteristic classes of principal bundles from cohomology to differential cohomology. We consider the problem of refining the construction…

We show that the virtual second Betti number of a finitely generated, residually free group $G$ is finite if and only if $G$ is either free, free abelian or the fundamental group of a closed surface. We also prove a similar statement in…

In this paper we give a gauge theoretic construction of the joint moduli space of stable G-Higgs bundles on closed Riemann surfaces, where the Riemann surface structure is allowed to vary in the Teichm\"uller space of the underlying smooth…

The signature of closed oriented manifolds is well-known to be multiplicative under finite covers. This fails for Poincar\'e complexes as examples of C. T. C. Wall show. We establish the multiplicativity of the signature, and more…

This paper unites the gauge-theoretic and hyperbolic-geometric perspectives on the asymptotic geometry of the character variety of SL(2,C) representations of a surface group. Specifically, we find an asymptotic correspondence between the…