#### Volume 21, issue 4 (2017)

 Recent Issues
 The Journal About the Journal Subscriptions Editorial Board Editorial Interests Editorial Procedure Submission Guidelines Submission Page Author Index To Appear ISSN (electronic): 1364-0380 ISSN (print): 1465-3060
Relations among characteristic classes of manifold bundles

### Ilya Grigoriev

Geometry & Topology 21 (2017) 2015–2048
##### Abstract

We study relations among characteristic classes of smooth manifold bundles with highly connected fibers. For bundles with fiber the connected sum of $g$ copies of a product of spheres ${S}^{d}×{S}^{d}$, where $d$ is odd, we find numerous algebraic relations among so-called “generalized Miller–Morita–Mumford classes”. For all $g>1$, we show that these infinitely many classes are algebraically generated by a finite subset.

Our results contrast with the fact that there are no algebraic relations among these classes in a range of cohomological degrees that grows linearly with $g$, according to recent homological stability results. In the case of surface bundles ($d=1$), our approach recovers some previously known results about the structure of the classical “tautological ring”, as introduced by Mumford, using only the tools of algebraic topology.

##### Keywords
manifold bundles, characteristic classes, tautological ring, Miller–Morita–Mumford classes
##### Mathematical Subject Classification 2010
Primary: 55R40, 55T10, 57R22