Characteristic classes, singular embeddings, and intersection homology

Abstract

This note announces some results on the relationship between global invariants and local topological structure. The first section gives a local-global formula for Pontrjagin classes or L-classes. The second section describes a corresponding decomposition theorem on the level of complexes of sheaves. A final section mentions some related aspects of "singular knot theory" and the study of nonisolated singularities. Analogous equivariant analogues, with local-global formulas for Atiyah-Singer classes and their relations to G-signatures, will be presented in a future paper.