Homological Stability, Characteristic Classes and the Minimal Genus Problem

Abstract

The purpose of this thesis is to study the (co-)homological properties of the classifying space of subsurface bundles in a trivial background bundle with fiber a manifold M. We will investigate homological stability pheonomena of this moduli space if M is simply-connected and at least 5-dimensional and the subsurfaces are equipped with tangential structures. Additionally we will investigate the representability of second homology classes by surfaces in general topological spaces. In the case of manifolds this yields a measure for the failure of homological stability if M is not simply-connected. In the introduction we will also briefly touch on how to proceed from these homological stability results to determining the stable characteristic classes of subsurface bundles.