Odd manifolds of small integral simplicial volume (Q1721828)

The notion of simplicial volume was introduced by Gromov and Thurston. For any connected oriented closed manifold, it measures how efficiently the fundamental class can be represented by real singular cycles. It is also interesting to study certain variations of the notion, as they are closely related to the original notion, as well as other invariants such as Betti numbers, \(L^2\)-Betti numbers and Euler characteristics. In the paper under review, the author considers the integral simplicial volume of a connected oriented closed manifold \(M\), defined as \[||M||_{\mathbb Z}=\min\{\,|c|_1:c\in C_n(M;\mathbb Z)\text{ is a } \mathbb Z\text{-fundamental cycle of }M\,\},\] where \(|c|_1=\sum_{j=0}^k |a_j|\) for any chain \(c=\sum_{j=0}^k a_j\cdot \sigma_j\) in \(C_n(M;\mathbb Z)\). Unlike the original notion, the integral simplicial volume allows only integral coefficients on the representing cycles, hence it is always a positive integer. The main result of the paper is to fully characterize the case where it achieves the smallest possible integer. It is shown that, \[||M||_{\mathbb Z}=1\text{ if and only if } M \text{ is homotopy equivalent to an odd dimensional sphere}.\] To prove the theorem (the difficulty is the only if part), the author first constructs the model space -- a topological space made up of only one simplex by pairwise gluing the faces according to a given matching, and this will serve as a basic topological model for manifolds with \(||M||_{\mathbb Z}=1\). Next by using the structure of model space, the author shows \(M\) is simply connected (except in dimension one which is easy to handle separately). Then the author uses a Poincaré duality homomorphism to show \(M\) is a homology sphere. Finally she uses Hurewicz and Whitehead theorems to finish the proof. Besides this, the paper also investigates manifolds with \(||M||_{\mathbb Z}=2\), and also the noncomputability of the integral simplicial volume.