Reducibility of low dimensional Poincar\'e duality spaces

Abstract

We discuss Poincar\'e duality complexes X and the question whether or not their Spivak normal fibration admits a reduction to a vector bundle in the case where the dimension of X is at most 4. We show that in dimensions less than 4 such a reduction always exists, and in dimension 4 such a reduction exists provided X is orientable. In the non-orientable case there are counterexamples to reducibility by Hambleton--Milgram.