Related papers: Tautological characteristic classes II: the Witt c…

In this paper we construct a family of cohomology classes on the moduli space of stable curves generalizing Witten's $r$-spin classes. They are parameterized by a phase space which has one extra dimension and in genus $0$ they correspond to…

We study surface representatives of homology classes of finite complexes which minimize certain complexity measures, including its genus and Euler characteristic. Our main result is that up to surgery at nullhomotopic curves minimizers are…

In this paper, by combining techniques from Ricci flow and algebraic geometry, we prove the following generalization of the classical uniformization theorem of Riemann surfaces. Given a complete noncompact complex two dimensional K\"ahler…

We prove a Milnor-Wood inequality for representations of the fundamental group of a compact complex hyperbolic manifold in the group of isometries of quaternionic hyperbolic space. Of special interest is the case of equality, and its…

Deformation K-theory associates to each discrete group G a spectrum built from spaces of finite dimensional unitary representations of G. In all known examples, this spectrum is 2-periodic above the rational cohomological dimension of G…

HyperK\"ahler spaces, including manifolds, orbifolds and conical singularities play an important role in superstring/$M$-theory and gauge theories as well as in differential and algebraic geometry. In this paper we provide hundreds of new…

Let $\Gamma$ be an irreducible lattice in a semisimple Lie group of real rank at least $2$. Suppose that $\Gamma$ has property (T;FD), that is, its finite dimensional representations have a uniform spectral gap. We show that if $\Gamma$ is…

We study universal families of stable genus two curves with level structure. Among other things, it is shown that the (1,1) part is spanned by divisor classes, and that there are no cycles of type (2,2) in the third cohomology of the first…

We formulate two-dimensional $N=(2,2)$ supersymmetric conformal field theories in terms of unitary full vertex operator superalgebras and develop their cohomology theory. Cohomology rings, Hodge numbers, and the Witten index of a unitary…

We introduce a 2-cocycle for symplectic and skew-hermitian hyperbolic groups over arbitrary fields and skew fields, with values in the Witt group of hermitian forms. This cocycle has good functorial properties: it is natural under extension…

The goal of the paper is to introduce a version of Schubert calculus for each dihedral reflection group W. That is, to each "sufficiently rich'' spherical building Y of type W we associate a certain cohomology theory and verify that, first,…

We improve, by a factor of 2, known homology stability ranges for the integral homology of symplectic groups over commutative local rings with infinite residue field and show that the obstruction to further stability is bounded below by…

Up to dimension five, we can prove that given any closed Riemannian manifold with nonnegative scalar curvature, of which the universal covering has vanishing homology group $H_k$ for all $k\geq 3$, either it is flat or it has Gauss-Bonnet…

For a given smooth $2$-knot in $S^4$, we relate the existence of a smooth Seifert hypersurface of a certain class to the existence of irreducible $ SU(2)$-representations of its knot group. For example, we see that any smooth $2$-knot…

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…

We study a Hopf algebroid, $\calh$, naturally associated to the groupoid $U_n^\delta\ltimes U_n$. We show that classes in the Hopf cyclic cohomology of $\calh$ can be used to define secondary characteristic classes of trivialized flat…

In this paper we complete the topological description of the space of representations of the fundamental group of a punctured surface in SL(2,R) with prescribed behavior at the punctures and nonzero Euler number, following the strategy…

A geometric construction of Sullivan's Stiefel-Whitney homology classes of a real analytic variety $X$ is given by means of the conormal cycle of an embedding of $X$ in a smooth variety. We prove that the Stiefel-Whitney classes define…

In this paper we study the category of graded modules for the current algebra associated to $\mathfrak{sl}_2$. The category enjoys many nice properties, including a tilting theory which was established in previous work of the authors. We…

We introduce a general theory of homological Milnor-Witt cycle modules over an excellent base scheme equipped with a dimension function, extending both Rost's cycle modules and Feld's theory over fields. To any such module we associate a…