On the Stiefel-Whitney classes of GKM manifolds

Abstract

We show that under standard assumptions on the isotropy groups of an integer GKM manifold, the equivariant Stiefel-Whitney classes of the action are determined by the GKM graph. This is achieved via a GKM-style description of the equivariant cohomology with coefficients in a finite field $\mathbb Z_{p}$ even though in this setting the restriction map to the fixed point set is not necessarily injective. This closes a gap in our argument why the GKM graph of a $6$-dimensional integer GKM manifold determines its nonequivariant diffeomorphism type. We introduce combinatorial Stiefel-Whitney classes of GKM graphs and use them to derive a nontrivial obstruction to realizability of GKM graphs in dimension $8$ and higher.