For a compact oriented submanifold without boundary in an oriented manifold, the normal Thom class gives a compactly supported cohomology class dual to its pushed-forward fundamental class. It is independent of the tubular neighborhood and its ordinary-cohomology image vanishes on the complement of the submanifold. A noncompact submanifold closed only as a subset generally has its dual in ordinary cohomology, using locally finite homology instead.
An orientation of a topological n-manifold without boundary is a choice of generator of each local homology group , compatible in coordinate neighbourhoods. Equivalently, local orientations of coordinate discs are chosen so their overlap changes have degree . This trivializes the orientation local system.
Here the printed denotes compactly supported cohomology, which we write . We prove the cyclicity assertion without assuming Poincare duality. By the compactly supported cohomology of Euclidean space, an open n-disc has one copy of in degree and zero in all other degrees. The compact-support Mayer–Vietoris sequence for open sets contains
Use the finite good cover allowed in the paper. Induction on the number of discs shows that any union of its discs has zero compact-support cohomology above degree : at each step the intersection with the new disc is itself a union of fewer discs with a good cover, so the displayed sequence and its higher-degree terms apply.
The same induction presents by a generator for each cover disc, with overlap relations , where is its orientation transition sign. Indeed of the intersection is generated by its overlap discs; extension by zero sends each generator to the two disc generators with these signs. Passing through the compact-support Mayer–Vietoris sequence imposes exactly those relations. This is top compactly supported cohomology from orientation signs.
Since is connected, the overlap graph is connected: a disconnection would split the union into two disjoint nonempty open subsets. A spanning tree expresses every generator as or , so is cyclic. Additional overlap relations can only impose . If is oriented, use its compatible local orientations; every relation becomes , and the presentation is exactly one free generator. Thus
In fact a nonorientable connected manifold has an orientation-reversing loop in this transition graph and gives . In dimension zero the connected manifold is a point and the assertion is immediate.
For a closed oriented n-manifold, Poincare duality says that its fundamental class gives isomorphisms by cap product
For an oriented manifold that is not necessarily compact, the corresponding ordinary-homology statement is , using the locally finite fundamental class. The version without compact supports on cohomology pairs with locally finite homology instead. Orientability and the absence of boundary are essential to these untwisted formulas; for a manifold with boundary one needs Poincare-Lefschetz duality, and for a nonorientable manifold one uses the orientation local system.
For the following cases, forces connectedness. The universal coefficient theorem for cohomology gives
since the Ext term from vanishes. Combining with duality yields the third homology of a closed oriented four-manifold constraint .
For a cochain complex , define the shift of a cochain complex by
For a cochain map , put . This is again a cochain map, so the construction is a functor. The sign ensures the standard cone identities; the shifted differential squares to zero. Iteration gives and differential , and .
For , its algebraic mapping cone is
Applying this differential twice gives first component , since is a cochain map, and second component . The maps
are cochain maps: and . They are maps of complexes of sheaves, because every displayed operation is a sheaf morphism in each degree.
The bounded below derived category of sheaves can be constructed by first quotienting the category of bounded below cochain complexes by cochain homotopy and then formally inverting all quasi-isomorphisms. A morphism may be represented by a roof . Alternatively, take injective resolutions of sheaves and use homotopy classes of maps between the resulting injective complexes. The cohomology sheaf functors descend to the localization, because they already identify homotopic maps and turn quasi-isomorphisms into isomorphisms. If in , applying these functors gives for every . Conversely, if all these sheaves vanish, the unique map is a quasi-isomorphism, which becomes invertible in . Hence
An exact triangle in a derived category is a triangle isomorphic to a cone triangle
In particular the last arrow is part of the structure; a mere sequence of three objects with successive composite zero does not suffice.
Suppose is degreewise exact. Define
Then , so is a cochain map. It is natural under maps of short exact sequences. It is degreewise surjective as a sheaf map, and its kernel can be identified with using . In these coordinates the kernel differential is
There is a contracting homotopy in degree :
Thus the kernel has zero cohomology sheaves. The cohomology-sheaf exact sequence is the sequence of the short exact sequence of complexes , or equivalently its ordinary complex-cohomology sequence at every stalk. It follows that induces isomorphisms of all cohomology sheaves, proving
Under this isomorphism the cone triangle becomes the exact triangle
where in the derived category.
For the final construction write and set , , , each initially placed in degree zero. The stated sequence is exact on stalks: on its first map is an isomorphism and its last sheaf is zero; on the equator its first sheaf is zero and the second map is an isomorphism. Take its connecting morphism
The source has only , whereas the target has only . Therefore every induced map is zero: in any degree at least one of its source and target is zero. This is a ghost morphism in a derived category.
To prove the derived morphism itself is nonzero, apply derived global sections, giving the hypercohomology sequence. The extension by zero identifies with the compactly supported cohomology of , and closed direct image identifies with . The complement is two open disks, each homeomorphic to , so
The degree-one part of the resulting exact sequence is
Thus is injective, in particular nonzero. With the hemispheres oriented from , the last map is , so an appropriately oriented equator generator maps to . A zero morphism in the derived category of sheaves would induce a zero map after derived global sections and taking cohomology. Consequently , although for every . This establishes explicitly that the collection of cohomology-sheaf functors detects zero objects but is not faithful on morphisms.
For a locally compact space, compactly supported cohomology is
with transition maps induced by enlarging supports. In closed balls are cofinal; their complements retract onto . The relative cohomology long exact sequence and contractibility of give
This is compactly supported cohomology of Euclidean space; for it is simply the cohomology of a point.
For an oriented -manifold without boundary, Poincare duality in its compact-support form states that capping with the locally finite fundamental class gives . If is closed, the ordinary fundamental class gives and a perfect complementary-degree pairing over .
Choose an oriented embedded closed ball in a connected closed oriented . Collapse to a point, identifying with using its orientation. The quotient map is continuous. By excision, the fundamental class maps to the local oriented generator in , and then to the generator of . Hence the collapse map has .
The reverse direction is not always possible. More generally a degree-one map between closed oriented manifolds induces an injective map on rational cohomology: if , duality supplies with , and
In particular there is no degree-one map , since but . This is a counterexample to an unconditional reverse assertion.
Finally let be the given bundle projection. The standard cohomology ring of complex projective space is , ; the integral generator of has for some integer . If a section of a fiber bundle existed, would give by functoriality. But , so and , contradicting . The facts used here are the sphere cohomology groups, the projective-space ring just stated, and multiplicative functoriality of cohomology. Thus the bundle has no section, the cohomological obstruction to a section of the twistor bundle.
Let be an oriented real vector bundle of rank over a paracompact base. A Thom class is a class restricting on every oriented fiber pair to its positive generator. The Thom isomorphism theorem states that this class exists uniquely with those fiber restrictions and that
Here is identified with the zero section. Equivalently use the disk/sphere bundle pair. The compact-support version is , with fiberwise compact support in the Thom construction. If the bundle is not oriented, the integral assertion requires the corresponding orientation local system.
For a closed co-oriented embedded submanifold of codimension , co-orientation means an orientation of its normal bundle. A tubular neighborhood identifies a neighborhood of with that bundle. Its Thom class, transferred by excision, is a class in . For compact this maps into the direct limit defining compactly supported cohomology, giving . The construction is independent of the tubular neighborhood and uses the chosen co-orientation. In an oriented ambient manifold it is the Poincare dual of the oriented submanifold. Here “closed submanifold” has the usual compact-without-boundary meaning; if it meant merely a closed subset and were noncompact, the supported relative class would still exist but need not have compact support.
We next prove the fixed-point implication without imposing an unprinted orientability assumption on . Set
Use a finite triangulation of the closed smooth manifold. The elementary Hopf trace identity says that the alternating trace of a chain endomorphism equals its alternating trace on homology. To verify it, split each finite-dimensional chain space as boundaries, a complement representing homology, and a complement mapping isomorphically onto the preceding boundaries. The traces on these two boundary summands cancel in adjacent degrees, leaving exactly the homology traces. The cohomology traces equal the homology traces because the induced maps are dual over .
If has no fixed points, compactness gives . Choose a triangulation of mesh less than and a sufficiently fine subdivision admitting a simplicial approximation uniformly within of . The subdivision chain map sends each simplex to simplices inside it. For a vertex of such a small simplex, , so cannot lie in the original coarse simplex. Consequently has zero diagonal coefficient on every coarse simplex. Its trace vanishes in every degree, while it induces on homology. The trace identity yields . Taking the contrapositive proves
This is the Lefschetz fixed-point theorem, established here rather than invoked. For oriented the same identity is the graph-diagonal formula for the Lefschetz number: , which vanishes when the graph misses the diagonal. Finally, homotopic maps induce the same cohomology maps, so their Lefschetz numbers agree.
Define compactly supported cohomology by
For , the transition map is induced by the identity map of pairs . Equivalently, take the cochain complex of singular cochains that vanish on every chain contained in the complement of some compact set. Directed unions are exact, giving the same definition.
For , the intervals , , are cofinal among compact subsets. The complement has two contractible components. The long exact sequence in relative cohomology contains the diagonal map , so its cokernel is , and all the other relative groups vanish. Enlarging the interval preserves the generator given by the difference of the two ends. Therefore
For the compact-support comparison with a one-point compactification, write . The assumed Hausdorff one-point compactification is compact; a compact subset is closed in . The Excision theorem removes from the pair , because its closure lies inside the open second member. Thus
Complements of compact subsets of are exactly the open neighbourhoods of in . The hypothesis supplies a cofinal family of contractible such neighbourhoods . For every one, the long exact sequence of the pair identifies
In degree zero, this is the kernel of evaluation on the component of , identified with reduced cohomology by subtracting the constant value there. In degree one the map is surjective; in higher degrees the positive cohomology of vanishes. These identifications are natural for inclusions of contractible neighbourhoods. Passing to the direct limit proves
For the specified disjoint union of lines, a compact subset meets only finitely many components and is bounded in each. Finite unions , with finite, are cofinal. Applying the preceding relative calculation componentwise gives
The one-point compactification of this space is the Hawaiian earring: each line becomes a circle by adding the common point , and every neighbourhood of contains all but finitely many whole circles. On the remaining finitely many circles it contains neighbourhoods of the common point. This describes exactly the shrinking-circle topology. In particular is not locally contractible at : every such neighbourhood contains a whole circle, whose generator remains nontrivial under the retraction that collapses all the other circles.
For integral singular cohomology, the comparison does not hold. Here is a degree-two obstruction that takes account of the shrinking-circle topology. The standard rational summand in Hawaiian earring homology theorem gives a direct summand in . The universal coefficient theorem for cohomology injects
The summand therefore contributes the nonzero Ext of the rationals with integer coefficients.
For completeness, this last algebraic assertion has an explicit proof. Present using generators and relations , . The corresponding free resolution shows that is the cokernel of
The constant sequence is not in the image. Otherwise iteration would give
For large , the factorial sum exceeds but is less than , making that congruence impossible. Thus the cokernel is nonzero. It follows that
which proves the failure of the claimed isomorphism. The ingredient concerning the Hawaiian earring is its singular-homology structure theorem, not the homology of an infinite CW complex wedge of circles; these topologies differ.
Let and . Here a closed submanifold means compact and without boundary, which is the condition needed for a compactly supported dual class. The orientations of and orient the normal bundle . Its Thom class is the unique relative class of degree restricting to the chosen orientation generator on every normal fiber. A tubular neighborhood identifies this class with one near in . Choose a compact normal disc neighborhood and extend the relative class to compactly supported cohomology of . Equivalently, apply Poincare duality to the pushed-forward fundamental class of :
This compactly supported dual of a compact submanifold is independent of the tubular neighborhood and represents intersection with . Fix the convention in complementary degree. Its image in ordinary cohomology restricts to zero on , because it comes from relative cohomology supported near . If a submanifold is only closed as a subset but is noncompact, its usual dual lies in ordinary cohomology instead; compact support is not asserted in that situation.
Now let be the diagonal, with the orientation inherited from , and let . For each , choose a basis of and its dual basis of satisfying . The Poincare duality pairing and the Künneth theorem give the cohomology class of the diagonal
The sign can be checked from the defining identity
For , moving the degree- class in the second factor past contributes , and interchanging and contributes ; the displayed coefficient cancels their product. Equivalently its exponent is modulo two.
The cohomological pushforward between closed oriented manifolds is characterized by
for complementary degrees. This follows immediately from its definition by Poincare duality and naturality of evaluation on pushed-forward homology. In degree , the matrix trace of on is consequently
For finite-dimensional maps between two possibly different vector spaces, . Thus this matrix trace equals that of on . Pulling back the diagonal formula by and applying graded commutativity of the cup product now yields
This establishes the Lefschetz coincidence number with the requested sign convention.
If for every , the map factors through . The diagonal class restricts to zero there, so its pullback is zero and . Taking the contrapositive proves the Lefschetz coincidence theorem:
No transversality or isolated-coincidence assumption is needed. This cohomological argument also applies to continuous maps, which covers the last request.
For a map of degree , the adjoint identity above gives, for all complementary classes on ,
Nondegeneracy therefore gives . Cyclic invariance of matrix trace proves the self-coincidence number of a map of nonzero degree formula
In particular, has one even-dimensional cohomology generator in each degree , so . Hence
If is homotopic to , homotopy invariance of cohomology gives and thus . The Lefschetz coincidence theorem supplies a point at which and agree.
A singular cochain has compact support when it vanishes on every simplex whose image lies outside some compact set. Such cochains form a subcomplex because the faces of a simplex outside that compact set also lie outside it. Its cohomology is compactly supported cohomology .
If is proper and a cochain on is supported in the compact set , its pullback is supported in the compact set . Pullback commutes with the coboundary, so it induces a well-defined map
For a connected n-manifold without boundary, a finite good cover presents its top compactly supported cohomology by one generator per disc and relations on overlaps. This follows from the compact-support Mayer–Vietoris sequence and vanishing above dimension n. The overlap graph is connected, so the group is cyclic. Coherent local orientations give ; an orientation-reversing loop gives .