Date Available

4-19-2013

Year of Publication

2013

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Document Type

Doctoral Dissertation

College

Arts and Sciences

Department/School/Program

Mathematics

First Advisor

Dr. Serge Ochanine

Abstract

A long-standing problem in cobordism theory has been to find convenient manifolds to represent cobordism classes. For example, in the late 1950's, Hirzebruch asked which complex cobordism classes can be represented by smooth connected algebraic varieties. This question is still open. Progress can be made on this and related problems by studying certain convenient connected algebraic varieties, namely smooth projective toric varieties. The primary focus of this dissertation is to determine which complex cobordism classes can be represented by smooth projective toric varieties. A complete answer is given up to dimension six, and a partial answer is described in dimension eight. In addition, the role of smooth projective toric varieties in the polynomial ring structure of complex cobordism is examined. More specifically, smooth projective toric varieties are constructed as polynomial ring generators in most dimensions, and evidence is presented suggesting that a smooth projective toric variety can be chosen as a polynomial generator in every dimension. Finally, toric varieties with an additional fiber bundle structure are used to study some manifolds in oriented cobordism. In particular, manifolds with certain fiber bundle structures are shown to all be cobordant to zero in the oriented cobordism ring.

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