Gysin Restriction of Topological and Hodge-Theoretic Characteristic Classes for Singular Spaces

We establish formulae that explain how the topological Goresky-MacPherson characteristic L-classes as well as the Hodge-theoretic Hirzebruch characteristic classes defined by Brasselet, Sch"urmann and Yokura transform under Gysin restrictions associated to normally nonsingular embeddings of singular spaces. We find that both types of classes transform in the same manner. We give a first application of these formulae in obtaining algebraic rigidity results for topologically homeomorphic projective varieties.