We prove that the locus of Prym curves (C,η) of genus g≥5 for which the Prym-canonical system |ωC(η)| is base point free but the Prym-canonical map is not an embedding is irreducible and unirational of dimension 2g+1.

In this paper, we study the Pontryagin numbers of 24 dimensional String manifolds. In partic- ular, we find representatives of an integral basis of the String cobrodism group at dimension 24, based on the work of Mahowald and Hopkins (The structure of 24 dimensional manifolds having normal bundles which lift to B O [8], from “Recent progress in homotopy theory” (D. M. Davis, J. Morava, G. Nishida, W. S. Wilson, N. Yagita, editors), Contemp. Math. 293, Amer. Math. Soc., Providence, RI, 89-110, 2002), Borel and Hirzebruch (Am J Math 80: 459–538, 1958) and Wall (Ann Math 75:163–198, 1962). This has immediate applications on the divisibility of various characteristic numbers of the manifolds. In particular, we establish the 2-primary divisibilities of the signature and of the modified signature coupling with the integral Wu class of Hopkins and Singer (J Differ Geom 70:329–452, 2005), and also the 3- primary divisibility of the twisted signature. Our results provide potential clues to understand a question of Teichner.

Recently Freed and Hopkins [11] proved that there is no parity anomaly in M-theory on pin+ manifolds in the low-energy field theory approximation, and they also developed an algebraic theory of cubic forms. Earlier Witten [33] proved the anomaly cancellation for spin manifolds by introducing the E8-bundle technique. Motivated by the cubic forms and the anomaly cancellation formulas of Witten-Freed-Hopkins, we give some new cubic forms on spin, spinc, spinω2 and orientable 12- manifolds respectively. We relate them to η-invariants when the manifolds are with boundary, and mod 2 indices on 10 dimensional characteristic submanifolds when the manifolds are spinc or spinω2 . Our method of producing these cubic forms is a combination of (generalized) Witten classes and the character of the basic representation of affine E8.

In this paper, we study some algebraic topology aspects of Stringc structures, more precisely, from the perspective of Whitehead tower and the perspective of the loop group of Spinc(n). We also extend the generalized Witten genera constructed for the first time by Chen et al. [J. Differential Geom. 88 (2011), pp. 1–40] to correspond to Stringc structures of various levels and give vanishing results for them.

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