The Reidemeister torsion of 3-manifolds (Q1871415)

This book studies the classical Reidemeister torsion and some of its more recent improvements suggested in the work of V. Turaev. The book complements the existing literature by providing a variety of interesting explicitly computed examples which mainly belong to three-dimensional topology. One of the author's principal goals is to study the torsion invariants of 3-dimensional manifolds, knots and links which represent an exciting geometric material illustrating the general techniques. The first chapter is devoted to the algebraic foundations of the concept of torsion. Here the author describes the well-known formalism of determinant lines adding to it some new features allowing to treat the signs. The second chapter studies Reidemeister torsion. The author calculates many examples including the classical theory of torsion of lens spaces. The relations between the Reidemeister torsion and the Alexander function are explained here in full detail. Many pictures of knots and links and explicit algebraic computations make this chapter quite useful for students studying the subject. The chapter however misses some foundational material, referring instead to the classical paper of \textit{J. Milnor} [Bull. Am. Math. Soc. 72, 358-426 (1966; Zbl 0147.23104)]. For instance, the author does not give a proof of the combinatorial invariance of the torsion. The third chapter studies the construction of Turaev's refined torsion which has less indeterminacy than the classical Reidemeister torsion. This is achieved by observing that the torsion represents a function on the set of Euler structures. The notion of an Euler structure (originally introduced by V. Turaev) can be expressed using different languages: for simplicial complexes it can be defined in terms of the simplicial structure, for smooth manifolds it has an equivalent expression in terms of vector fields, for 3-manifolds it can be also expressed using \(\text{Spin}^c\) structures. The Reidemeister-Turaev torsion of rational homology spheres is studied in detail in the book. The last chapter 4 describes briefly three analytic theories. The author starts with the Meng-Taubes-Turaev theorem stating equivalence between the Seiberg-Witten invariants of 3-manifolds and the Reidemeister-Turaev torsion. Then he describes the result of M. Hutchings and Y.-J. Lee relating the torsion of the manifold, the torsion of the Novikov complex and the zeta-function of the gradient flow of a closed 1-form. The third theory is the theory of Ray-Singer analytic torsion. Chapter 4 is written in a very brief style, it contains very few proofs.