Twisted Reidemeister torsions via Heegaard splittings (Q2042095)

The Reidemeister torsion is a combinatorial invariant of homological complexes, which is defined as an alternating product of determinants. It follows from a deep theorem of \textit{T. A. Chapman} [Am. J. Math. 96, 488--497 (1974; Zbl 0358.57004)] that it is a topological invariant of manifolds: it does not depend on the choice of the simplicial or cellular decomposition. However, it is not a homotopy invariant, and it has been celebrated for distinguishing between some homotopic but non-homeomorphic 3-manifolds, called lens spaces (see [\textit{K. Reidemeister}, Abh. Math. Semin. Univ. Hamb. 11, 102--109 (1935; Zbl 0011.32404; JFM 61.1352.01)]). It is in general a difficult task to compute this invariant. In the case of a knot complement, there is essentially one determinant to compute. The relevant matrix can be obtained by Fox calculus, once a special presentation of the fundamental group of the knot is given. The present paper proposes a combinatorial framework to compute the Reidemeister torsion of a closed 3-manifold from a Heegard splitting. The author uses results of \textit{A. J. Sieradski} [Invent. Math. 84, 121--139 (1986; Zbl 0604.57001)] to describe one of the determinants involved in the computation of the torsion for the homological complex given by the Heegard splitting. The other determinants can be computed as for knots. As it is mentioned in the paper, for a given manifold it is not easy to get an explicit expression for this determinant. Nevertheless computations are performed for some Seifert fibered 3-manifolds, where the author recovers the results obtained by \textit{T. Kitano} in [Tokyo J. Math. 17, No. 1, 59--75 (1994; Zbl 0846.55010)].