Genus of a multiplicative sequence

In mathematics, a genus of a multiplicative sequence is a ring homomorphism from the ring of smooth compact manifolds up to the equivalence of bounding a smooth manifold with boundary (i.e., up to suitable cobordism) to another ring, usually the rational numbers, having the property that they are constructed from a sequence of polynomials in characteristic classes that arise as coefficients in formal power series with good multiplicative properties.

to each manifold X such that The manifolds and manifolds with boundary may be required to have additional structure; for example, they might be oriented, spin, stably complex, and so on (see list of cobordism theories for many more examples).

is the signature of the oriented manifold X, then

is a genus from oriented manifolds to the ring of integers.

is a formal power series in z with constant term 1, we can define a multiplicative sequence by where

is the kth elementary symmetric function of the indeterminates

of compact, connected, smooth, oriented manifolds corresponding to Q is given by where the

The power series Q is called the characteristic power series of the genus

A theorem of René Thom, which states that the rationals tensored with the cobordism ring is a polynomial algebra in generators of degree 4k for positive integers k, implies that this gives a bijection between formal power series Q with rational coefficients and leading coefficient 1, and genera from oriented manifolds to the rational numbers.

Now let M be a closed smooth oriented manifold of dimension 4n with Pontrjagin classes

Friedrich Hirzebruch showed that the L genus of M in dimension 4n evaluated on the fundamental class of

, the signature of M (i.e., the signature of the intersection form on the 2nth cohomology group of M): This is now known as the Hirzebruch signature theorem (or sometimes the Hirzebruch index theorem).

is always integral for a smooth manifold was used by John Milnor to give an example of an 8-dimensional PL manifold with no smooth structure.

Pontryagin numbers can also be defined for PL manifolds, and Milnor showed that his PL manifold had a non-integral value of

Since projective K3 surfaces are smooth complex manifolds of dimension two, their only non-trivial Pontryagin class is

It can be computed as -48 using the tangent sequence and comparisons with complex chern classes.

This can be used to compute its intersection form as a unimodular lattice since it has

The first few values are The Todd genus has the particular property that it assigns the value 1 to all complex projective spaces (i.e.

), and this suffices to show that the Todd genus agrees with the arithmetic genus for algebraic varieties as the arithmetic genus is also 1 for complex projective spaces.

This observation is a consequence of the Hirzebruch–Riemann–Roch theorem, and in fact is one of the key developments that led to the formulation of that theorem.

The first few values are The  genus of a spin manifold is an integer, and an even integer if the dimension is 4 mod 8 (which in dimension 4 implies Rochlin's theorem) – for general manifolds, the  genus is not always an integer.

This was proven by Hirzebruch and Armand Borel; this result both motivated and was later explained by the Atiyah–Singer index theorem, which showed that the  genus of a spin manifold is equal to the index of its Dirac operator.

By combining this index result with a Weitzenbock formula for the Dirac Laplacian, André Lichnerowicz deduced that if a compact spin manifold admits a metric with positive scalar curvature, its  genus must vanish.

This only gives an obstruction to positive scalar curvature when the dimension is a multiple of 4, but Nigel Hitchin later discovered an analogous

Indeed, Mikhail Gromov, H. Blaine Lawson, and Stephan Stolz later proved that the  genus and Hitchin's

-valued analog are the only obstructions to the existence of positive-scalar-curvature metrics on simply-connected spin manifolds of dimension greater than or equal to 5.

(As usual, Q is the characteristic power series of the genus.)

One explicit expression for f(z) is where and sn is the Jacobi elliptic function.

Examples: The first few values of such genera are: Example (elliptic genus for quaternionic projective plane) : Example (elliptic genus for octonionic projective plane, or Cayley plane): The Witten genus is the genus associated to the characteristic power series where σL is the Weierstrass sigma function for the lattice L, and G is a multiple of an Eisenstein series.

The Witten genus of a 4k dimensional compact oriented smooth spin manifold with vanishing first Pontryagin class is a modular form of weight 2k, with integral Fourier coefficients.