Related papers: Homotopical Height
We describe various equivalent ways of associating to an orbifold, or more generally a higher \'etale differentiable stack, a weak homotopy type. Some of these ways extend to arbitrary higher stacks on the site of smooth manifolds, and we…
Let $X$ be a closed oriented connected topological manifold of dimension $n\geq 5$. The structure group of $X$ is the abelian group of equivalence classes of all pairs $(f, M)$ such that $M$ is a closed oriented manifold and $f\colon M \to…
We extend the classical theory of homotopical $\Sigma$-sets $\Sigma^n$ developed by Bieri, Neumann, Renz and Strebel for abstract groups, to $\Sigma$-sets $\Sigma_{\mathrm{top}}^n$ for locally compact Hausdorff groups. Given such a group…
The main goal of this article is to construct some geometric invariants for the topology of the set $\mathcal{F}$ of flat connections on a principal $G$-bundle $P\,\longrightarrow\, M$. Although the characteristic classes of principal…
We study smooth higher symmetry groups and moduli $\infty$-stacks of generic higher geometric structures on manifolds. Symmetries are automorphisms which cover non-trivial diffeomorphisms of the base manifold. We construct the smooth higher…
Let $M$ be a smooth manifold. We use Chern-Weil theory to study the characteristic classes of principal $G$-bundles built from continuous families of $\pi_{1}(M)$-representations, where $G$ is a compact Lie group. We then relate these…
We define the class of high dimensional graph manifolds. These are compact smooth manifolds supporting a decomposition into finitely many pieces, each of which is diffeomorphic to the product of a torus with a finite volume hyperbolic…
Let G be a Lie group with finitely many connected components and let K be a maximal compact subgroup. We assume that G satisfies the rapid decay (RD) property and that G/K has non-positive sectional curvature. As an example, we can take G…
The topological fundamental group $\pi_{1}^{top}$ is a homotopy invariant finer than the usual fundamental group. It assigns to each space a quasitopological group and is discrete on spaces which admit universal covers. For an arbitrary…
Let $M_{l,m}$ be the total space of the $S^3$-bundle over $S^4$ classified by the element $l\sigma+m\rho\in{\pi_4(SO(4))}$, $l,m\in\mathbb Z$. In this paper we study the homotopy theory of gauge groups of principal $G$-bundles over…
Let $M$ be a locally symmetric irreducible closed manifold of dimension $\ge 3$. A result of Borel [Bo] combined with Mostow rigidity imply that there exists a finite group $G = G(M)$ such that any finite subgroup of $\text{Homeo}^+(M)$ is…
This paper has 3 principal goals: (1) to survey what is know about mapping class and Torelli groups of simply connected compact Kaehler manifolds, (2) supplement these results, and (3) present a list of questions and open problems to…
We develop a geometric approach to stable homotopy groups of spheres in the spirit of the work of Pontrjagin and Rokhlin. A new proof of the Hopf Invariant One Theorem by J.F.Adams is obtained in all dimensions except 15 and 31. To prove…
We study the asymptotic growth of homology groups and the cellular volume of classifying spaces as one passes to normal subgroups $G_n<G$ of increasing finite index in a fixed finitely generated group $G$, assuming $\bigcap_n G_n =1$. We…
In this paper, we use homotopical algebra (or abstract homotopical methods) to study smooth homotopical problems of infinite-dimensional $C^\infty$-manifolds in convenient calculus. More precisely, we discuss the smoothing of maps,…
Let $G$ be a connected compact Lie group, and let $M$ be a connected Hamiltonian $G$-manifold with equivariant moment map $\phi$. We prove that if there is a simply connected orbit $G\cdot x$, then $\pi_1(M)\cong\pi_1(M/G)$; if additionally…
Let $G$ be a Lie group, with an invariant non-degenerate symmetric bilinear form on its Lie algebra, let $\pi$ be the fundamental group of an orientable (real) surface $M$ with a finite number of punctures, and let $\bold C$ be a family of…
We describe the structure of $d$-dimensional homogeneous Lorentzian $G$-manifolds $M=G/H$ of a semisimple Lie group $G$. Due to a result by N. Kowalsky, it is sufficient to consider the case when the group $G$ acts properly, that is the…
We show that the homotopy type of a 4-manifold $M$ whose fundamental group is a finitely presentable $PD_3$-group $\pi$ and with $w_1(M)=w_1(\pi)$ is determined by $\pi$, $\pi_2(M)$, $k_1(M)$ and the equivariant intersection pairing…
Given a base manifold $M$ and a Lie group $G$, we define $\bar{\cal A}^H_M$ a space of generalized $G$-connections on $M$ with the following properties: - The space of smooth connections ${\cal A}^\infty_M = \sqcup_\pi {\cal A}^\infty_\pi$…