We study categories of d-dimensional cobordisms from the perspective of Tillmann and Galatius-Madsen-Tillmann-Weiss. There is a category $C_θ$ of closed smooth (d-1)-manifolds and smooth d-dimensional cobordisms, equipped with generalised orientations specified by a fibration $θ: X \to BO(d)$. The main result of GMTW is a determination of the homotopy type of the classifying space $BC_θ$. The goal of the present paper is a systematic investigation of subcategories $D$ of $C_θ$ having classifying space homotopy equivalent to that of $C_θ$, the smaller such $D$ the better.
We prove that in most cases of interest, $D$ can be chosen to be a homotopy commutative monoid. As a consequence we prove that the stable cohomology of many moduli spaces of surfaces with $θ$-structure is the cohomology of the infinite loop space of a certain Thom spectrum. This was known for certain special $θ$, using homological stability results; our work is independent of such results and covers many more cases.
In this paper we study the topology of the moduli spaces of representations of degree $2$ for free monoids. We calculate the virtual Hodge polynomials of the character varieties for several types of $2$-dimensional representations. Furthermore, we count the number of isomorphism classes for each type of $2$-dimensional representations over any finite field ${\Bbb F}_q$, and show that the number coincides with the virtual Hodge polynomial evaluated at $q$.
We survey recent work on moduli spaces of manifolds with an emphasis on the role played by (stable and unstable) homotopy theory. The theory is illustrated with several worked examples.
We prove a homological stability theorem for the moduli spaces of manifolds diffeomorphic to g(S^n x S^n), provided n > 2. This generalises Harer's stability theorem for the homology of mapping class groups. Combined with previous work of the authors, it gives a calculation of the homology of these moduli spaces in a range of degrees.
We describe the moduli space of extensions in the model category of simplicial presheaves. This article can be seen as a generalization of Blomgren-Chacholski results in the case of simplicial sets. Our description of the moduli space of extensions treat the equivariant and the nonequivariant case in the same setting. As a new result, we describe the moduli space of M-bundles over a fixed space X, when M is a simplicial monoid. Moreover, the moduli space of M-bundles is classified by the classifying space of the simplicial submonoid generated by homotopy invertible elements of M. We give a gen…
The homology of configuration spaces of point-particles in manifolds has been studied intensively since the 1970s; in particular it is known to be stable if the underlying manifold is connected and open. Closely related to configuration spaces are moduli spaces of manifolds with marked points, and in [Tillmann, 2016] this relation was used to show that the homology of these moduli spaces is also stable as the number of marked points goes to infinity. Since a disc neighbourhood of a marked point may be viewed as the cone on its boundary sphere, we may think of marked points as inessential conic…
We study the moduli space of instantons on a simply connected positive definite four manifold by analyzing the classifying map of the index bundle of a family of Dirac operators parametrized by the moduli space. As applications we compute the cohomology ring for the charge 2 moduli space in the rank stable limit.
We prove an analogue of the Madsen-Weiss theorem for high dimensional manifolds. For example, we explicitly describe the ring of characteristic classes of smooth fibre bundles whose fibres are connected sums of g copies of S^n x S^n, in the limit as g tends to infinity. Rationally it is a polynomial ring in certain explicit generators, giving a high dimensional analogue of Mumford's conjecture. More generally, we study a moduli space N(P) of those null-bordisms of a fixed (2n-1)-dimensional manifold P which are highly connected relative to P. We determine the homology of N(P) after stabilisati…
We will give a geometric description of the nth transversal homotopy monoid of k-dimensional complex projective space, where we stratify by lower dimensional complex projective spaces in the usual way. Transversal homotopy monoids are defined as classes of based transversal maps into Whitney stratified spaces up to equivalence through such maps. We will show the nth transversal homotopy monoid of k-dimensional complex projective space is isomorphic to isotopy classes of certain filtrations of the n-sphere. The required filtrations are by nested closed subspaces $X_0 \subset ... \subset X_k=S^n…
We consider moduli spaces of $d$-dimensional manifolds with embedded particles and discs. In this moduli space, the location of the particles and discs is constrained by the $d$-dimensional manifold. We will compare this moduli space with the moduli space of $d$-dimensional manifolds in which the location of such decorations is no longer constrained, i.e. the decorations are decoupled. We generalise work by Bödigheimer--Tillmann for oriented surfaces and obtain new results for surfaces with different tangential structures as well as to higher dimensional manifolds. We also provide a generalisa…
We prove a homological stability theorem for moduli spaces of manifolds of dimension $2n$, for attaching handles of index at least $n$, after these manifolds have been stabilised by countably many copies of $S^n \times S^n$. Combined with previous work of the authors, we obtain an analogue of the Madsen--Weiss theorem for any simply-connected manifold of dimension $2n \geq 6$.
We prove a homological stability theorem for the moduli spaces of manifolds diffeomorphic to $\#^{g}(S^{n+1}\times S^{n})$, provided $n \geq 4$. This is an odd dimensional analogue of a recent homological stability result of S. Galatius and O. Randal Williams for the moduli space of manifolds diffeomorphic to $\#^{g}(S^{n}\times S^{n})$ for $n \geq 3$.
We prove that the stable moduli space of $(n-1)$-connected, $n$-parallelizable, $(2n+1)$-dimensional manifolds is homology equivalent to an infinite loopspace for $n \geq 4, n \neq 7$. The main novel ingredient is a version of the cobordism category incorporating surgery data in the form of Lagrangian subspaces.
We develop homotopical algebraic geometry (see math.AG/0207028) in the special context where the base symmetric monoidal model category is the category S of spectra, i.e. what might be called, after Waldhausen, ``brave new algebraic geometry''. We discuss various model topologies on the model category of commutative algebras in S, the associated theories of geometric S-stacks (a geometric S-stack being an analog of Artin notion of algebraic stack in Algebraic Geometry), and finally show how to define global moduli spaces of associative ring spectra structures and a moduli space related to topo…
We investigate periodic diffeomorphisms of non-compact aspherical manifolds (and orbifolds) and describe a class of spaces that have no homotopically trivial periodic diffeomorphisms. Prominent examples are moduli spaces of curves and aspherical locally symmetric spaces with non-vanishing Euler characteristic. In the irreducible locally symmetric case, we show that no complete metric has more symmetry than the locally symmetric metric. In the moduli space case, we build on work of Farb and Weinberger and prove an analogue of Royden's theorem for complete finite volume metrics.
We prove a homological stability theorem for moduli spaces of simply-connected manifolds of dimension $2n > 4$, with respect to forming connected sum with $S^n \times S^n$. This is analogous to Harer's stability theorem for the homology of mapping class groups. Combined with previous work of the authors, it gives a calculation of the homology of the moduli spaces of manifolds diffeomorphic to connected sums of $S^n \times S^n$ in a range of degrees.
We study the moduli space of rank stable based instantons over a connected sum of q copies of CP^2. For c_2=1 we give the homotopy type of the moduli space. For c_2=2 we compute the cohomology of the moduli space.
Implementing an idea due to John Baez and James Dolan we define new invariants of Whitney stratified manifolds by considering the homotopy theory of smooth transversal maps. To each Whitney stratified manifold we assign transversal homotopy monoids, one for each natural number. The assignment is functorial for a natural class of maps which we call stratified normal submersions. When the stratification is trivial the transversal homotopy monoids are isomorphic to the usual homotopy groups. We compute some simple examples and explore the elementary properties of these invariants. We also assign …
In this paper we study spaces of algebras over an operad (non-symmetric) in symmetric monoidal model categories. We first compute the homotopy fiber of the forgetful functor sending an algebra to its underlying object, extending a result of Rezk. We then apply this computation to the construction of geometric moduli stacks of algebras over an operad in a homotopical algebraic geometry context in the sense of Toën and Vezzosi. We show under mild hypotheses that the moduli stack of unital associative algebras is a Zariski open substack of the moduli stack of non-necessarily unital associative al…
In this paper we first show that on projective manifolds (M, ω), there are holomorphic determinant bundles (in the sense of Knusden-Mumford used by Bismut, Gillet, Soule) which play the role of the geometric quantum bundle, namely one for each input data of a Hermitian holomorphic line bundle L of non-trivial Chern class on a compact Kahler manifold Z (with Todd genus non-zero) and a choice of a geometric quantization of (M, ω). Next we further study the generalization of the vortex equations on Kahler 4-manifold which has been studied earlier by Bradlow. We show that when the Kahler 4-manifol…
