On flat manifold bundles and the connectivity of Haefliger's classifying spaces

Abstract

We investigate a conjecture due to Haefliger and Thurston in the context of foliated manifold bundles. In this context, Haefliger-Thurston's conjecture predicts that every $M$-bundle over a manifold $B$ where $\text{dim}(B)\le \text{dim}(M)$ is cobordant to a flat $M$-bundle. In particular, we study the bordism class of flat $M$-bundles over low dimensional manifolds, comparing a finite dimensional Lie group $G$ with ${\text{Diff}}_0(G)$ and localizing the holonomy of flat M-bundles to be supported in a ball.

This version is to appear in the Proceedings of the AMS