Singular decompositions of a cap product

Abstract

In the case of a compact orientable pseudomanifold, a well-known theorem of M. Goresky and R. MacPherson says that the cap product with a fundamental class factorizes through the intersection homology groups. In this work, we show that this classical cap product is compatible with a cap product in intersection (co)homology that we have previously introduced. If the pseudomanifold is also normal, for any commutative ring of coefficients, the existence of a classical Poincaré duality isomorphism is equivalent to the existence of an isomorphism between the intersection homology groups corresponding to the zero and the top perversities.