EQUIVARIANT CHARACTERISTIC CLASSES

AMANDA MONTEIRO AND NIVALDO DE GÓES GRULHA JÚNIOR

The Chern Classes, in the complex case, and the Stiefel-Whitney Classes, in the
real case, generalize the notion of the Euler-Poincaré characteristic. They were first
defined as obstruction to the construction of r-frames tangent to a complex smooth
manifold, in the first case, or real, in the second. For the complex case, Chern
(in 1946) showed several interpretations of these classes, such as their “axiomatic”
definition.
For a possibly singular complex algebraic variety X there are several kinds of
“Chern classes” of X available. The Chern-Schwartz-MacPherson class is one of
them. R. MacPherson constructed the class to solve the so-called Grothendieck-
Deligne conjecture: Actually, he proved the existence of a unique natural trans-
formation C∗ : F(X) → H2∗ (X; Z) from the abelian group F(X) of constructible
functions over X to the homology group (of even dimension) so that if X is non-
singular, then C∗ (1X ) = c(T X) _ [X], where 1X is the characteristic function.
Independently, M. H. Schwartz had introduced obstruction classes (defined in a
local cohomology) for the extension of stratified radial vector frames over X, and it
is shown ([2]) that both classes coincide, so C∗ (1X ) is often denoted by C SM (X).
In this study we think of a G-version of the Chern-Schwartz-MacPherson class
for algebraic G-varieties X. Our main aim is to focus on the elementary (or formal)
construction of the equivariant version of C∗ , as well as G-versions of F(X) and
H∗ (X) (or A∗ (X)). So, for simplicity, we basically discussed in complex context
like the original [3] using singular cohomology and the Borel-Moore homology.
We’ll also talk about the G-version of Thom polynomial.

Acknowledgements: We would like to thanks FAPESP for the financial support.

References
[1] Ohmoto, T., Equivariant Chern classes of singular algebraic varieties with group actions,
Math. Proc. Cambridge Phil. Soc. 140, p. 115-134, 2006.
[2] Brasselet, J.P.; Schwartz, M.H., Sur les classes de Chern d’une ensemble analytique complexe,
Astérisque 82-83, p. 93-148, 1981.
[3] MacPherson, R., Chern classes for singular algebraic varieties, Ann. of Math. 100, p. 421-432,
1974.

(Amanda Monteiro) ICMC-USP

Email address: ammonteiro@usp.br

(Nivaldo de Góes Grulha Júnior) ICMC-USP

Email address: njunior@icmc.usp.br