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 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.

Definition

A genus assigns a number to each manifold X such that
  1. ;
  2. ;
  3. if X is the boundary of a manifold with boundary.
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. The value is in some ring, often the ring of rational numbers, though it can be other rings such as or the ring of modular forms.
The conditions on can be rephrased as saying that is a ring homomorphism from the cobordism ring of manifolds to another ring.
Example: If is the signature of the oriented manifold X, then is a genus from oriented manifolds to the ring of integers.

The genus associated to a formal power series

A sequence of polynomials K1, K2,... in variables p1, p2,... is called multiplicative if
implies that
If Q is a formal power series in z with constant term 1, we can define a multiplicative sequence
by
where pk is the kth elementary symmetric function of the indeterminates zi.
The genus φ of oriented manifolds corresponding to Q is given by
where the pk are the Pontryagin classes of X. The power series Q is called the characteristic power series of the genus φ. Thom's theorem, 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.

L genus

The L genus is the genus of the formal power series
where the numbers are the Bernoulli numbers. The first few values are:
. 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 is equal to the signature of M :
This is now known as the Hirzebruch signature theorem.
The fact that L2 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 p2, and so was not smoothable.

Application on K3 surfaces

Since projective K3 surfaces are smooth complex manifolds of dimension two, their only non-trivial Pontryagin class is in. It can be computed as -48 using the tangent sequence and comparisons with complex chern classes. Since, we have its signature. This can be used to compute its intersection form as a unimodular lattice since it has, and using the classification of unimodular lattices.

Todd genus

The Todd genus is the genus of the formal power series
with as before, Bernoulli numbers. The first few values are
The Todd genus has the particular property that it assigns the value 1 to all complex projective spaces, 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.

 genus

The  genus is the genus associated to the characteristic power series
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 – 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 -valued obstruction in dimensions 1 or 2 mod 8. These results are essentially sharp. 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.

Elliptic genus

A genus is called an elliptic genus if the power series Q = z/f satisfies the condition
for constants δ and ε.
One explicit expression for f is
where
and sn is the Jacobi elliptic function.
Examples:
The first few values of such genera are:
Example :
Example :

Witten genus

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.