In this paper, we develop a new necessary and sufficient condition for the vanishing of $4$-Massey products of elements in the modulo-$2$ Galois cohomology of a field. This new description allows us to define a splitting variety for $4$-Massey products, which is shown in the appendix to satisfy a local-to-global principle over number fields. As a consequence, we prove that, for a number field, all such $4$-Massey products vanish whenever they are defined. This provides new explicit restrictions on the structure of absolute Galois groups of number fields.

We give an explicit construction for a $K(A, n)$ simplicial group and explain its topological interpretation.

As an application of our papers in hermitian K-theory, in favourable cases we prove the periodicity of hermitian K-groups with a shorter period than previously obtained. We also compute the homology and cohomology with field coeffcients of infinite orthogonal and symplectic groups of specific rings of integers in a number field.

In the 1960's and 1970's, the Adams Conjecture figured prominently both in homotopy theory and in geometric topology. Quillen sketched one way to attack the conjecture and then proved it with an entirely different line of argument. Both of his approaches led to spectacular and beautiful new mathematics.

We study bounds on nilpotence in H*(BG), the mod p cohomology of the classifying space of a compact Lie group G. Part of this is a report of our previous work on this problem, updated to reflect the consequences of Peter Symonds's recent verification of Dave Benson's Regularity Conjecture. New results are given for finite p-groups, leading to good bounds on nilpotence in H*(BP) determined by the subgroup structure of the p-group P.

This article presents results which are consistent with conjectures about Leibniz (co)homology for discrete groups, due to J. L. Loday in 2003. We prove that rack cohomology has properties very close to the properties expected for the conjectural Leibniz cohomology. In particular, we prove the existence of a graded dendriform algebra structure on rack cohomology, and we construct a graded associative algebra morphism H•(−) → HR•(−) from group cohomology to rack cohomology which is injective for ● = 1.

Let k be a field, let k* = k \ {0} and let C2 be a cyclic group of order 2. We compute all of the braided monoidal structures on the category of k-vector spaces graded by the Klein group C2 × C2. For the monoidal structures we compute the explicit form of the 3-cocycles on C2 × C2 with coefficients in k*, while, for the braided monoidal structures, we compute the explicit form of the abelian 3-cocycles on C2 × C2 with coefficients in k*. In particular, this will allow us to produce examples of quasi-Hopf algebras and weak braided Hopf algebras with underlying vector space k[C2 × C2].

We compare three different ways of defining group cohomology with coefficients in a crossed module: (1) explicit approach via cocycles; (2) geometric approach via gerbes; (3) group theoretic approach via butterflies. We discuss the case where the crossed module is braided and the case where the braiding is symmetric. We prove the functoriality of the cohomologies with respect to weak morphisms of crossed modules and also prove the ‘long’ exact cohomology sequence associated to a short exact sequence of crossed modules and weak morphisms.

We begin the paper with a simple formula for the second integral homology of a range of Artin groups. The formula is derived from a polytopal classifying space. We then introduce the notion of a twisted Artin group and obtain polytopal classifying spaces for a range of such groups. We demonstrate that these explicitly constructed spaces can be implemented on a computer and used in homological calculations.

Pseudodifferential operators are formal Laurent series in the formal inverse ∂−1 of the derivative operator ∂ whose coefficients are holomorphic functions on the Poincaré upper half-plane. Given a discrete subgroup Γ of SL(2,ℝ), automorphic pseudodifferential operators for Γ are pseudodifferential operators that are Γ-invariant, and they are closely linked to Jacobi-like forms and modular forms for Γ. We construct linear maps from the space of automorphic pseudodifferential operators and from the space of Jacobi-like forms for Γ to the cohomology space of the group Γ, and prove that these maps are compatible with the respective Hecke operator actions.

The positive cohomology groups of a finite group acting on a ring vanish when the ring has a norm one element. In this note we give explicit homotopies on the level of cochains when the group is cyclic, which allows us to express any cocycle of a cyclic group as the coboundary of an explicit cochain. The formulas in this note are closely related to the effective problems considered in previous joint work with Eli Aljadeff.

Let $G$ be a finitely generated, infinite group, let $p\,>\,1$, and let ${{L}^{p}}\left( G \right)$ denote the Banach space $\left\{ \sum{_{x\in G}{{a}_{x}}x}|\sum{_{x\in G}|{{a}_{x}}{{|}^{p}}<\infty } \right\}$. In this paper we will study the first cohomology group of $G$ with coefficients in ${{L}^{p}}\left( G \right)$, and the first reduced ${{L}^{p}}$-cohomology space of $G$. Most of our results will be for a class of groups that contains all finitely generated, infinite nilpotent groups.

Under an extra hypothesis satisfied in every known case, we show that the Euler class of an orientable odd-dimensional Poincaré duality group over any ring has order at most two. We construct groups that are of type FL over the complex numbers but are not FL over the rationals. We construct group algebras over fields for which $K_0$ contains torsion, and construct non-free stably free modules for the group algebras of certain virtually free groups.

AMS 2000 Mathematics subject classification: Primary 19A31. Secondary 16S34; 20J05; 55N15; 57P10

Each permutation representation of a finite group $G$ can be used to pull cohomology classes back from a symmetric group to $G$. We study the ring generated by all classes that arise in this fashion, describing its variety in terms of the subgroup structure of $G$.

We also investigate the effect of restricting to special types of permutation representations, such as $\mathrm{GL}_n(\mathbb{F}_p)$ acting on flags of subspaces.

AMS 2000 Mathematics subject classification: Primary 20J06