Homotopy groups of highly connected manifolds

Abstract

In this paper we give a formula for the homotopy groups of $(n-1)$-connected $2n$-manifolds as a direct sum of homotopy groups of spheres in the case the $n^{th}$ Betti number is larger than $1$. We demonstrate that when the $n^{th}$ Betti number is $1$ the homotopy groups might not have such a decomposition. The techniques used in this computation also yield formulae for homotopy groups of connected sums of sphere products and CW complexes of a similar type. In all the families of spaces considered here, we establish a conjecture of J. C. Moore.