A note on the equivariant cobordism of generalized Dold manifolds

Abstract

Let $(X,J) $ be an almost complex manifold with a (smooth) involution $\sigma:X\to X$ such that $Fix(\sigma)\neq \emptyset$. Assume that $\sigma$ is a complex conjugation, i.e, the differential of $\sigma$ anti-commutes with $J$. The space $P(m,X):=\mathbb{S}^m\times X/\!\sim$ where $(v,x)\sim (-v,\sigma(x))$ is known as a generalized Dold manifold. Suppose that a group $G\cong \mathbb Z_2^s$ acts smoothly on $X$ such that $g\circ \sigma =\sigma\circ g$ for all $g\in G$. Using the action of the diagonal subgroup $D=O(1)^{m+1}\subset O(m+1)$ on the sphere $\mathbb S^{m}$ for which there are only finitely many pairs of antipodal points that are stablized by $D$, we obtain an action of $\mathcal G=D\times G$ on $\mathbb S^m\times X$, which descends to a (smooth) action of $\mathcal G$ on $P(m,X)$. When the stationary point set $X^G$ for the $G$ action on $X$ is finite, the same also holds for the $\mathcal G$ action on $P(m,X)$. The main result of this note is that the equivariant cobordism class $[P(m,X),\mathcal G]$ vanishes if and only if $[X,G]$ vanishes. We illustrate this result in the case when $X$ is the complex flag manifold, $\sigma$ is the natural complex conjugation and $G\cong (\mathbb Z_2)^n$ is contained in the diagonal subgroup of $U(n)$.