Poincaré duality complexes with highly connected universal cover (Q1713039)

This paper proves certain conjectures of Turaev on the classification, realization and splitting of Poincaré complexes of dimension \(n\) with \((n-2)\)-connected universal cover. Specifically the authors show that a triple \( (G, \omega, \mu)\), consisting of a group \(G\), a cohomology class \(\omega \in H^{1}(G; \mathbb{Z}/2\mathbb{Z})\) and a homology class \(\mu \in H_{n}(G; \mathbb{Z}^{\omega})\), can be realized by a PD\(_{n}\)-complex with \((n-2)\)-connected universal cover if and only if the Turaev map applied to \(\mu\) yields an equivalence. They further show that a PD\(_{n}\)-complex with \((n-2)\)-connected universal cover is a nontrivial connected sum of two such complexes if and only if its fundamental group is a nontrivial free product of groups. Finally they consider indecomposable PD\(_{n}\)-complexes. In this case the results depend on the parity of \(n\). The paper gives complete details including the definition of the important Turaev map.