Nilpotence in Group Cohomology

Abstract

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 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.

arXiv comment22 pages, better organized invariant theory results in section 4. Final version is in Proc. E.M.S. 56 (2013)