Cohomological Methods In Transformation Groups

This is an account of the theory of certain types of compact transformation groups, namely those that are susceptible to study using ordinary cohomology theory and rational homotopy theory, which in practice means the torus groups and elementary abelian p-groups. The efforts of many mathematicians have combined to bring a depth of understanding to this area. However to make it reasonably accessible to a wide audience, the authors have streamlined the presentation, referring the reader to the literature for purely technical results and working in a simplified setting where possible. In this way the reader with a relatively modest background in algebraic topology and homology theory can penetrate rather deeply into the subject, whilst the book at the same time makes a useful reference for the more specialised reader.

The description for this book, Seminar on Transformation Groups. (AM-46), Volume 46, will be forthcoming.

These Proceedings contain articles based on the lectures and in formal discussions at the Conference on Transformation Groups held at Tulane University, May 8 to June 2, 1967 under the sponsorship of the Advanced Science Seminar Projects of the National Science Foun dation (Contract No. GZ 400). They differ, however, from many such Conference proceedings in that particular emphasis has been given to the review and exposition of the state of the theory in its various mani festations, and the suggestion of direction to further research, rather than purely on the publication of research papers. That is not to say that there is no new material contained herein. On the contrary, there is an abundance of new material, many new ideas, new questions, and new conjectures~arefully incorporated within the framework of the theory as the various authors see it. An original objective of the Conference and of this report was to supply a much needed review of and supplement to the theory since the publication of the three standard works, MONTGOMERY and ZIPPIN, Topological Transformation Groups, Interscience Pub lishers, 1955, BOREL et aI. , Seminar on Transformation Groups, Annals of Math. Surveys, 1960, and CONNER and FLOYD, Differen tial Periodic Maps, Springer-Verlag, 1964. Considering this objective ambitious enough, it was decided to limit the survey to that part of Transformation Group Theory derived from the Montgomery School.

This book provides an overview of some of the most active topics in the theory of transformation groups over the past decades and stresses advances obtained in the last dozen years. The emphasis is on actions of Lie groups on manifolds and CW complexes. Manifolds and actions of Lie groups on them are studied in the linear, semialgebraic, definable, analytic, smooth, and topological categories. Equivalent vector bundles play an important role. The work is divided into fifteen articles and will be of interest to anyone researching or studying transformations groups. The references make it easy to find details and original accounts of the topics surveyed, including tools and theories used in these accounts.

Some Historical Background This book deals with the cohomology of groups, particularly finite ones. Historically, the subject has been one of significant interaction between algebra and topology and has directly led to the creation of such important areas of mathematics as homo logical algebra and algebraic K-theory. It arose primarily in the 1920's and 1930's independently in number theory and topology. In topology the main focus was on the work ofH. Hopf, but B. Eckmann, S. Eilenberg, and S. MacLane (among others) made significant contributions. The main thrust of the early work here was to try to understand the meanings of the low dimensional homology groups of a space X. For example, if the universal cover of X was three connected, it was known that H2(X; A. ) depends only on the fundamental group of X. Group cohomology initially appeared to explain this dependence. In number theory, group cohomology arose as a natural device for describing the main theorems of class field theory and, in particular, for describing and analyzing the Brauer group of a field. It also arose naturally in the study of group extensions, N

Contributed lectures presented earlier at Winter School on Transformation Groups.

As part of the scientific activity in connection with the 70th birthday of the Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznan, an international conference on algebraic topology was held. In the resulting proceedings volume, the emphasis is on substantial survey papers, some presented at the conference, some written subsequently.

An extended tour through a selection of the most important trends in modern geometric group theory.