yourXiv > Mathematics > 0910.3414

The Gelfand-Kalinin-Fuks class and characteristic classes of transversely symplectic foliations.

D. Kotschick S. Morita

posted in Mathematics on Monday, October 19th, 2009

In the early 1970's, Gelfand, Kalinin and Fuks found an exotic characteristic class of degree 7 in the Gelfand-Fuks cohomology of the Lie algebra of formal Hamiltonian vector fields on the plane. We prove that this cohomology class can be decomposed as a product of a certain leaf cohomology class of degree 5 and the transverse symplectic class. This is similar to the well known factorization of the Godbillon-Vey class for codimension n foliations. We also interpret the characteristic classes of transversely symplectic foliations introduced by Kontsevich in terms of the known classes and prove non-triviality for some of them.

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