Petrie conjecture

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This page has not been refereed. The information given here might be incomplete or provisional.

Contents

1 Problem

If a compact Lie group G acts smoothly and non-trivially on a closed smooth manifold M, what constraints does this place on the topology of M in general and on the Pontrjagin classes of M in particular?

In the case where M is homotopy equivalent to \CP^n, M \simeq \CP^n, Petrie [Petrie1972] restricted his attention to smooth actions of the Lie group S^1 = \{z \in \mathbb{C} \ \colon \ |z| = 1\}, and posed the following conjecture.

Conjecture 1.1 [Petrie1972]. Suppose that S^1 acts smoothly and non-trivially on a closed smooth 2n-manifold M \simeq \CP^n. Then the total Pontrjagin class p(M) of M agrees with that of \CP^n, i.e.,

p(M) = (1+x^2)^{n+1} for a generator x of H^2(M; \mathbb{Z}).

2 Progress to date

As of November 30, 2010, the Petrie conjecture has not been confirmed in general. However, it has been proven in the following special cases.

  • Petrie [Petrie1973] has verified his conjecture under the assumption that the action of S^1 on M \simeq \mathbb{C}P^n extends to a smooth action of the torus T^n.
  • By the work of [Dejter1976], the Petrie conjecture is true if \dim M = 6, i.e., M \simeq \CP^3, and more generaly, if \dim M \leq 6.
  • According to [Hattori1978], the Petrie conjecture holds if M admits an invariant almost complex structure with the first Chern class c_1(M) = (n+1)x.
  • Other special cases where the Petrie conjecture holds are described by [Wang1975], [Yoshida1975/76], [Iberkleid1978], and [Muslin1978].
  • By [Tsukada&Washiyama1979], [Masuda1981], and [Masuda1983], the Petrie conjecture is true if the fixed point set consists of three or four connected components.
  • It follows from [James1985] that the Petrie conjecture is also true if \dim M = 8, i.e., M \simeq \CP^4.
  • The work of [Dessai2002] confirms the Petrie conjecture if the action of S^1 on M extends to an appropriate nice action of Pin(2) and \dim M \leq 22.
  • According to [Dessai&Wilking2004], the Petrie conjecture holds if the action of S^1 on M extends to a smooth action of the torus T^k and \dim M \leq 8k-4.

3 Further discussion

A symplectic version of the Petrie conjecture is discussed in the article of [Tolman2010].

4 References

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