Cobordism of nested manifolds
arXiv:2512.18277
Abstract
We study cobordisms of nested manifolds, which are manifolds together with embedded submanifolds, which can themselves have embedded submanifolds, etc. We identify a nested analog of the Pontryagin-Thom construction. Moreover, when the highest-dimensional manifold has a normal bundle with a framed direction, we find spaces homotopy equivalent to the nested Pontryagin-Thom spaces that relate nested manifolds up to cobordism with links up to cobordism. This gives rise to nested cobordism invariants coming from previously studied cobordism invariants of links. In addition, we provide an alternative proof of a result by Wall about the splitting of the stable nested cobordism groups.
24 pages, 7 figures, final version. Comments welcome!