Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

In Search Of A Class Of Representatives For Su-Cobordism Using The Witten Genus, John E. Mosley

Theses and Dissertations--Mathematics

In algebraic topology, we work to classify objects. My research aims to build a better understanding of one important notion of classification of differentiable manifolds called cobordism. Cobordism is an equivalence relation, and the equivalence classes in cobordism form a graded ring, with operations disjoint union and Cartesian product. My dissertation studies this graded ring in two ways:

1. by attempting to find preferred class representatives for each class in the ring.

2. by computing the image of the ring under an interesting ring homomorphism called the Witten Genus.