Obstructions for Clifford Structures on Vector Bundles.
It is shown that the -index of a 2-distribution in an 8-dimensional spin vector bundle over an 8-complex is independent of the 2-distribution. Necessary and sufficient conditions for the existence of 2-distributions in such vector bundles are given in terms of characteristic classes and a certain secondary cohomology operation. In some cases this operation is computed.
Let ξ be an oriented 8-dimensional spin vector bundle over an 8-complex. In this paper we give necessary and sufficient conditions for ξ to have 4 linearly independent sections or to be a sum of two 4-dimensional spin vector bundles, in terms of characteristic classes and higher order cohomology operations. On closed connected spin smooth 8-manifolds these operations can be computed.
We study invariant contact -spheres on principal circle-bundles and solve the corresponding existence problem in dimension 3. Moreover, we show that contact - spheres can only exist on -dimensional manifolds and we construct examples of contact -spheres on such manifolds. We also consider relations between tautness and roundness, a regularity property concerning the Reeb vector fields of the contact forms in a contact -sphere.
Necessary and sufficient conditions for the existence of -dimensional oriented vector bundles () over CW-complexes of dimension with prescribed Stiefel-Whitney classes , and Pontrjagin class are found. As a consequence some results on the span of 6 and 7-dimensional oriented vector bundles are given in terms of characteristic classes.
We show that coefficients of residue formulas for characteristic numbers associated to a smooth toral action on a manifold can be taken in a quotient field This yields canonical identities over the integers and, reducing modulo two, residue formulas for Stiefel Whitney numbers.
Necessary and sufficient conditions for the existence of two linearly independent sections in an 8-dimensional spin vector bundle over a CW-complex of the same dimension are given in terms of characteristic classes and a certain secondary cohomology operation. In some cases this operation is computed.