On the high-dimensional geography problem

Abstract

In 1962, Wall showed that smooth, closed, oriented, $(n-1)$-connected $2n$-manifolds of dimension at least $6$ are classified up to connected sum with an exotic sphere by an algebraic refinement of the intersection form which he called an $n$-space. In this paper, we complete the determination of which $n$-spaces are realizable by smooth, closed, oriented, $(n-1)$-connected $2n$-manifolds for all $n \neq 63$. In dimension $126$ the Kervaire invariant one problem remains open. Along the way, we completely resolve conjectures of Galatius-Randal-Williams and Bowden-Crowley-Stipsicz, showing that they are true outside of the exceptional dimension $23$, where we provide a counterexample. This counterexample is related to the Witten genus and its refinement to a map of $\mathbb{E}_\infty$-ring spectra by Ando-Hopkins-Rezk. By previous work of many authors, including Wall, Schultz, Stolz and Hill-Hopkins-Ravenel, as well as recent joint work of Hahn with the authors, these questions have been resolved for all but finitely many dimensions, and the contribution of this paper is to fill in these gaps.