On Invariants of Hirzebruch and Cheeger-Gromov (Q1426822)

A basic question in the theory of manifolds reads as follows: is it true that two closed manifolds which are homotopy equivalent are also homeomorphic? Special cases of this question are the Poincaré and Borel Conjectures. Here the authors prove that if \(M\) is a compact oriented manifold of dimension \(4k+3\) with \(k>0\), such that the fundamental group \(\pi_1(M)\) is not torsion free, then there are infinitely many manifolds which are simply homotopy equivalent to \(M\), but not homeomorphic to \(M\). In order to detect this infinite number of manifolds, the authors construct a secondary invariant \(\tau_{(2)}\) on the structure set of \(M\), that conincides with the \(\rho\)-invariant of Cheeger-Gromov. Therefore, \(\rho\) is not a homotopy invariant for the manifolds in question. On the other hand, the authors prove that if \(\Gamma\) is a torsion-free discrete subgroup of \(SL_n(\mathbb{R})\), then \(\rho\) is a homotopy invariant for manifolds with fundamental group \(\Gamma\).