Cohomology and K-theory of generalized Dold manifolds fibred by complex flag manifolds

Abstract

Let $\nu=(n_1,\ldots, n_s), s\ge 2,$ be a sequence of positive integers and let $n=\sum_{1\le j\le s}n_j$. Let $\mathbb CG(\nu)=U(n)/(U(n_1)\times \cdots\times U(n_s))$ be the complex flag manifold. Denote by $P(m,\nu)=P(\mathbb S^m,\mathbb CG(\nu))$ the generalized Dold manifold $\mathbb S^m\times \mathbb CG(\nu)/\langle \theta\rangle $ where $\theta=\alpha\times \sigma$ with $\alpha:\mathbb S^m\to \mathbb S^m$ being the antipodal map and $\sigma:\mathbb CG(\nu)\to \mathbb CG(\nu)$, the complex conjugation. The manifold $P(m,\nu)$ has the structure of a smooth $\mathbb CG(\nu)$-bundle over the real projective space $\mathbb RP^m.$ We determine the additive structure of $H^*(P(m,\nu);R)$ when $R=\mathbb Z$ and its ring structure when $R$ is a commutative ring in which $2$ is invertible. As an application, we determine the additive structure of $K(P(m,\nu))$ almost completely and also obtain partial results on its ring structure. The results for the singular homology are obtained for generalized Dold spaces $P(S,X)=S\times X/\langle \theta\rangle$, where $\theta=\alpha\times \sigma$, $\alpha:S\to S$ is a fixed point free involution and $\sigma:X\to X$ is an involution with $\mathrm{Fix}(\sigma)\ne \emptyset,$ for a much wider class of spaces $S$ and $X$.