Analytic torsion for group actions (Q1179969)

The article extends the notions of analytic torsion due to Ray and Singer and \(PL\)-Reidemeister torsion for compact Riemannian manifolds to compact Riemannian manifolds with an action of a finite group \(G\) by isometries. The identification of analytic and \(PL\)-torsion for closed manifolds due to Cheeger and Müller is generalized to the equivariant setting in odd dimensions. It turns out that these invariants do not agree if the dimension is even. the reason for this phenomenon is the failure of equivariant Poincaré duality. The equivariant analytic torsion is used to give another proof of the deRham theorem that two orthogonal representations are linearly isomorphic if and only if their unit spheres are equivariantly diffeomorphic.