Relations among characteristic classes of manifold bundles

Abstract: We study relations among characteristic classes of smooth manifold bundles with highly-connected fibers. For bundles with fiber the connected sum of $g$ copies of a product of spheres $S^d \times S^d$ and an odd $d$, we find numerous algebraic relations among the so-called "generalized Miller-Morita-Mumford classes". For all $g > 1$, we show that these infinitely many classes are algebraically generated by a finite subset. Our results contrast with the fact that there are no algebraic relations among these classes in a range of cohomological degrees that grows linearly with $g$, according to recent homological stability results. In the case of surface bundles ($d=1$), our approach recovers some previously known results about the structure of the classical "tautological ring", as introduced by Mumford, using only the tools of algebraic topology.