Cellular cohomology 2026-10-06
The cohomology of the cellular cochain complex naturally agrees with singular cohomology. A CW complex with no odd cells has zero cellular differentials and free integral cohomology on its even cells, although its cup product still requires a separate computation.
The cellular cochain complex of finite Real projective space consists of alternating maps zero and two. Its groups can be tensored using the Künneth theorem; the integral Künneth torsion polynomial efficiently counts all tensor and Tor functor summands. A product of factors of dimensions two, three and four has free-rank polynomial and torsion polynomial .
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2016 iii Paper 114 1 c Solution Created 2026-10-03 Updated 2026-10-06
The standard CW complex structure on Real projective space has one cell in each dimension from zero to three. Its integral cellular boundary is multiplication by in even positive degrees and zero in odd degrees. Thus the integral cellular cochain complex for isin degrees . With coefficients , all its differentials vanish, so every one of these four cohomology groups is one-dimensional.
The lift-and-divide construction of the Bockstein homomorphism turns the integral differential into modulo . Therefore is an isomorphism, while the maps from degrees are zero. The Bockstein cohomology is consequentlyFor comparison, in the mod-two cohomology ring of real projective space , , this says , and . The last two formulas also follow from the Bockstein derivation rule and the truncation .