Cap-product support lemma for a two-set cover Created 2026-09-24 Updated 2026-11-05
A valid support statement for the cap product uses a relative class. Let be a closed, oriented -dimensional smooth manifold, and let be a compact codimension-zero submanifold with boundary. If restricts to zero on , thenIndeed, the pair long exact sequence in cohomology lifts to . Excision, using a boundary collar, identifies this with . Poincare-Lefschetz duality gives a class in whose image is the desired cap product.
Vanishing restrictions on both sets of an open cover do not force this cap product to vanish. Cover a circle by two proper open arcs. Its generator restricts to zero on each arc, but generates and is nonzero. The valid vanishing cup product from an open cover instead says that when vanishes on one covering set and on the other.
Cup length 2026-10-14
The largest number of positive-degree cohomology classes whose cup product is nonzero, with a specified coefficient ring ; it can be infinite. It is zero if there is no nonzero positive-degree class. The vanishing cup product from an open cover argument implies that Lusternik–Schnirelmann category is at least cup length plus one. For Complex projective space , its integral cup length is .
Sections of a projective bundle 2026-10-06
A complex line subbundle defines a section of a fiber bundle selecting at each point. Pullback of the tautological bundle along is , so if is its Euler class, then . For a decomposition , the resulting sections and the open sets where coordinate projection is nonzero identify the tautological line with . These identifications support the projective-bundle factorization via a vanishing cup product from an open cover.