Group actions, non-K\"ahler complex manifolds and SKT structures

We give a construction of integrable complex structures on the total space of a smooth principal bundle over a complex manifold, with an even dimensional compact Lie group as structure group, under certain conditions. This generalizes the constructions of complex structure on compact Lie groups by Samelson and Wang, and on principal torus bundles by Calabi-Eckmann and others. It also yields large classes of new examples of non-K\"ahler compact complex manifolds. Moreover, under suitable restrictions on the base manifold, the structure group, and characteristic classes, the total space of the principal bundle admits SKT metrics. This generalizes recent results of Grantcharov et al. We study the Picard group and the algebraic dimension of the total space in some cases. We also use a slightly generalized version of the construction to obtain (non-K\"ahler) complex structures on tangential frame bundles of complex orbifolds.Comment: A new Section 4 is adde

The Toledo invariant on smooth varieties of general type

We propose a definition of the Toledo invariant for representations of fundamental groups of smooth varieties of general type into semisimple Lie groups of Hermitian type. This definition allows to generalize the results known in the classical case of representations of complex hyperbolic lattices to this new setting: assuming that the rank of the target Lie group is not greater than two, we prove that the Toledo invariant satisfies a Milnor-Wood type inequality and we characterize the corresponding maximal representations.Comment: 19 page