Round fold maps on $3$-dimensional manifolds and their integral and rational cohomology rings

Abstract

Fold maps are smooth maps at each singular point of which it is represented as the product map of a Morse function and the identity map. Round fold maps are, in short, such maps the sets of all singular points of which are embedded concentrically. They are, as Morse functions, important in understanding the topologies and the differentiable structures in geometric ways. In the present paper, we study cohomology rings of $3$-dimensional manifolds admitting round fold maps into the plane and see that difference of the coefficient rings and topological types of round fold maps are closely related. This is an explicit precise new study on our previous study, showing that a $3$-dimensional closed and orientable manifold is a so-called {\it graph manifold}, or a manifold obtained by gluing so-called circle bundles over surfaces along tori, if and only if it admits a round fold map into the plane. We also show another exposition on classifications of graph manifolds admitting such maps whose topological types are of a certain simplest class.