Cohomological obstructions to Nielsen realization

Abstract

For a based manifold (M,*), the question of whether the surjection Diff(M,*) \rightarrow \pi_0 Diff(M,*) admits a section is an example of a Nielsen realization problem. This question is related to a question about flat connections on M-bundles and is meaningful for M of any dimension. In dimension 2, Bestvina-Church-Souto showed a section does not exist when M is closed and has genus g\ge 2. Their techniques are cohomological and certain aspects are specific to surfaces. We give new cohomological techniques to generalize their result to many locally symmetric manifolds. The main tools include Chern-Weil theory, Milnor-Wood inequalities, and Margulis superrigidity.