Parametrized geometric cobordism and smooth Thom stacks

Abstract: We develop a theory of parametrized geometric cobordism by introducing smooth Thom stacks. This requires identifying and constructing a smooth representative of the Thom functor acting on vector bundles equipped with extra geometric data, leading to a geometric refinement of the the Pontrjagin-Thom construction in stacks. We demonstrate that the resulting theory generalizes the parametrized cobordism of Galatius-Madsen-Tillman-Weiss. The theory has the feature of being both versatile and general, allowing for the inclusion of families of various geometric data, such as metrics on manifolds and connections on vector bundles, as in recent work of Cohen-Galatius-Kitchloo and Ayala.