The Kervaire-Milnor invariant in the stable classification of spin 4-manifolds

Abstract

We consider the role of the Kervaire-Milnor invariant in the classification of closed, connected, spin 4-manifolds up to stabilisation by connected sums with copies of $S^2 \times S^2$. This stable classification is detected by a spin bordism group over the classifying space $B\pi$ of the fundamental group. Part of the computation of this bordism group via an Atiyah-Hirzebruch spectral sequence is determined by a collection of codimension two Arf invariants. We show that these Arf invariants can be computed by the Kervaire-Milnor invariant evaluated on certain elements of $\pi_2$. In particular this yields a new stable classification of spin 4-manifolds with 2-dimensional fundamental groups.

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ORCID for Daniel Kasprowski: orcid.org/0000-0001-5926-2206

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