Date of Award

5-2010

Document Type

Open Access Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Degree Program

Mathematics

First Advisor

Tom Braden

Second Advisor

Eduardo Cattani

Third Advisor

Paul Gunnells

Subject Categories

Mathematics | Statistics and Probability

Abstract

In this thesis we investigate 1-skeleta and their associated cohomology rings. 1-skeleta arise from the 0- and 1-dimensional orbits of a certain class of manifold admitting a compact torus action and many questions that arise in the theory of 1-skeleta are rooted in the geometry and topology of these manifolds. The three main results of this work are: a lifting result for 1-skeleta (related to extending torus actions on manifolds), a classification result for certain 1-skeleta which have the Morse package (a property of 1-skeleta motivated by Morse theory for manifolds) and two constructions on 1-skeleta which we show preserve the Lefschetz package (a property of 1-skeleta motivated by the hard Lefschetz theorem in algebraic geometry). A corollary of this last result is a conceptual proof (applicable in certain cases) of the fact that the coinvariant ring of a finite reflection group has the strong Lefschetz property.

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