Sets of degrees of maps between SU(2)-bundles over the 5-sphere

Abstract

We compute the sets of degrees of maps between principal $SU(2)$-bundles over $S^5$, i.e. between any of the manifolds $SU(2)\times S^5$ and $SU(3)$. We show that the Steenrod squares provide the only obstruction to the existence of a mapping degree between these manifolds, and construct explicit maps realizing each integer that occurs as a mapping degree. Added Erratum. After this manuscript was accepted for publication by Transformation Groups, Xueqi Wang pointed out a mistake in our paper. At the end of this arXiv version we add an erratum, where we correct the statement and the proof of Theorem 1.1.