Related papers: Higher torsion and secondary transfer of unipotent…
We explain the relationship between various characteristic classes for smooth manifold bundles known as ``higher torsion'' classes. We isolate two fundamental properties that these cohomology classes may or may not have: additivity and…
When two smooth manifold bundles over the same base are fiberwise tangentially homeomorphic, the difference is measured by a homology class in the total space of the bundle. We call this the relative smooth structure class. Rationally and…
This paper attempts to investigate the space of various characteristic classes for smooth manifold bundles with local system on the total space inducing a finite holonomy covering. These classes are known as twisted higher torsion classes.…
We give a construction of a torsion invariant of bundles of smooth manifolds which is based on the work of Dwyer, Weiss and Williams on smooth structures on fibrations.
We show that the smooth torsion of bundles of manifolds constructed by Dwyer, Weiss, and Williams satisfies the axioms for higher torsion developed by Igusa. As a consequence we obtain that the smooth Dwyer-Weiss-Williams torsion is…
Higher bundles are homotopy coherent generalisations of classical fibre bundles. They appear in numerous contexts in geometry, topology and physics. In particular, higher principal bundles provide the geometric framework for higher-group…
Using the higher analytic torsion form of Bismut and Lott we construct a characteristic class for smooth sphere bundles. We calculate this class in the case where the sphere bundle comes from a complex vector bundle. Related to these…
Curvature and torsion of linear transports along paths in, respectively, vector bundles and the tangent bundle to a differentiable manifold are defined and certain their properties are derived.
This paper contains a long summary of the basic properties of higher FR torsion. An attempt is made to simplify the constructions from my book Higher Franz-Reidemeister Torsion (IP/AMS Studies in Advanced Math 31). Some new basic theorems…
We develop a description of higher gauge theory with higher groupoids as gauge structure from first principles. This approach captures ordinary gauge theories and gauged sigma models as well as their categorifications on a very general…
A theory of double affine and special double affine bundles, i.e. differential manifolds with two compatible (special) affine bundle structures, is developed as an affine counterpart of the theory of double vector bundles. The motivation…
We use a variation of a classical construction of A. Hatcher to construct virtually all stable exotic smooth structures on compact smooth manifold bundles whose fibers have sufficiently large odd dimension (at least twice the base dimension…
We describe the notion of a \emph{weighting} along a submanifold $N\subset M$, and explore its differential-geometric implications. This includes a detailed discussion of weighted normal bundles, weighted deformation spaces, and weighted…
In this paper we extend Badzioch's, Dorabiala's, and Williams' definition of cohomological higher smooth torsion to a twisted cohomological higher torsion invariant. Additionally, we show that this still satisfies geometric additivity and…
In this paper we prove geometric residue theorems for bundle maps over a compact manifold. The theory developed associates residues to the singularity submanifolds of the map for any invariant polynomial. The theory is then applied to a…
We study quotients of multi-graded bundles, including double vector bundles. Among other things, we show that any such quotient fits into a tower of affine bundles. Applications of the theory include a construction of normal bundles for…
We study smooth bundles over surfaces with highly connected almost parallelizable fiber $M$ of even dimension, providing necessary conditions for a manifold to be bordant to the total space of such a bundle and showing that, in most cases,…
By explicitly comparing constructions, we prove that the higher torsion invariants of smooth bundles defined by Igusa and Klein via Morse theory agree with the higher torsion invariants defined by Badzioch, Dorabiala, Dwyer, Weiss, and…
We investigate when the tangent bundle of a projective manifold has a non-trivial first order (or positive-dimensional) deformation. This leads to a new conjectural characterization of the complex projective space.
The notion of a higher bundle gerbe is introduced to give a geometric realization of the higher degree integral cohomology of certain manifolds. We consider examples using the infinite dimensional spaces arising in gauge theories.