Links, pictures and the homology of nilpotent groups (Q5956076)

The purpose of this paper is to prove the so-called \(k\)-slice conjecture, which says that a link \(L\) in \(3\)-space is \(k\)-slice if and only if all of the Milnor \(\bar\mu\)-invariants of length \(\leq 2k\) vanish. A link is defined to be \(k\)-slice if the components bound disjoint surfaces in the \(4\)-disk \(D^4\) such that the push-off maps \(\pi_1 (V_i)\to\pi_1 (D^4 -V), (V=\bigcup_i V_i)\) map entirely into the \(k\)-th lower central series subgroup of \(\pi_1 (D^4 -V)\). Partial results had been obtained earlier by T. Cochran, K. Orr and X. S. Lin. In 1989 Kent Orr observed that if a link is \(k\)-slice then its \(\bar\mu\)-invariants of length \(\leq k\) vanish, and he then defined, for any link with such vanishing \(\bar\mu\)-invariants, an obstruction element which vanishes if and only if the link is \(k\)-slice. This obstruction lives in \(\pi_3 (K_k)\), where \(K_k\) is defined from the Eilenberg-MacLane space \(K(F/F_k ,1)\) by killing the generating elements. Here \(F\) is the free group of rank \(m\), where \(m\) is the number of components of \(L\), and \(F_k\) is the \(k\)-th lower central series subgroup. The proof of the main theorem is reduced to an understanding of \(H_3 (K_k)\cong H_3 (F/F_k)\), which is closely related to the homology of the Lie algebra \({\mathcal L}_k\) defined by the successive quotients of the lower central series of \(F/F_k\). It is a classical result that the rational homology of \(F/F_k\) and of \({\mathcal L} _k\) are isomorphic but what is needed here is for this to be true for integral homology. This fact is proved by constructing an explicit filtered chain complex whose associated graded complex is the Koszul complex of \({\mathcal L} _k\). The construction works more generally for any nilpotent group whose lower central series quotients are torsion-free. This complex is explicitly described but the authors attribute its discovery to the use of Igusa's theory of pictures, which shows how to draw pictures to represent cocycles of a free nilpotent group. This theory is reviewed in a later section of the paper.