The possible cohomology of certain types of taut submanifolds

Abstract

The first purpose of this paper is to exhibit several families of compact manifolds that do not ad nit taut embeddings into any sphere. The second is to enumerate ths possible Z2-cohomology rings of those compact manifolds which do admit a taut embedding and whose cohomology rings satisfy certain degeneracy conditions. The first purpose is easily attained once the second has been accomplished, for it is a simple matter to present families of spaces whose cohomology rings satisfy the required degeneracy conditions, but are not on the list of those admitting a taut embedding.