Complexity of PL manifolds

Abstract: We extend Matveev's complexity of 3-manifolds to PL compact manifolds of arbitrary dimension, and we study its properties. The complexity of a manifold is the minimum number of vertices in a simple spine. We study how this quantity changes under the most common topological operations (handle additions, finite coverings, drilling and surgery of spheres, products, connected sums) and its relations with some geometric invariants (Gromov norm, spherical volume, volume entropy, systolic constant). Complexity distinguishes some homotopically equivalent manifolds and is positive on all closed aspherical manifolds (in particular, on manifolds with non-positive sectional curvature). There are finitely many closed hyperbolic manifolds of any given complexity. On the other hand, there are many closed 4-manifolds of complexity zero (manifolds without 3-handles, doubles of 2-handlebodies, infinitely many exotic K3 surfaces, symplectic manifolds with arbitrary fundamental group).

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In [Acta Appl. Math. 19, No.2, 101--130 (1990; Zbl 0724.57012)], \textit{S. V. Matveev} defined a notion of complexity of 3-manifolds in terms of spines. This is an integer-valued invariant of 3-manifolds having many nice properties: complexity is additive under connected sum, and there are only finitely many closed irreducible (or cusped hyperbolic) 3-manifolds with a given complexity. Since then, the theory of complexity has been extended to many topological and geometric objects by various authors including the author of the paper under review. In this paper, the author defines a complexity for PL-manifolds of arbitrary dimension, as a very natural generalization of Matveev's complexity. He studies the behavior of the invariant under topological operations such as handle additions, finite coverings, drilling and surgery of spheres and connected sums. He then observes that plenty of 4-manifolds including 4-manifolds without 3-handles, infinitely many \(\mathrm{K}3\) surfaces and closed symplectic manifolds with arbitrary fundamental group are of complexity zero. On the contrary, he provides relations between the complexity and some geometric invariants, e.g. Gromov norm, spherical volume and volume entropy, and shows that there are closed manifolds of arbitrary high complexity in all dimensions.

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