Exponential growth of homological torsion for towers of congruence subgroups of Bianchi groups (Q2450918)

\textit{N. Bergeron} and \textit{A. Venkatesh} formulated a conjecture on the `largeness' of the growth of torsion in the homology of towers of arithmetic groups in the case of odd-dimensional symmetric spaces with rank \(G(\mathbb{R}) - \)rank \(K = 1\) [J. Inst. Math. Jussieu 12, No. 2, 391--447 (2013; Zbl 1266.22013)]. They verified the conjecture in the case of cocompact arithmetic lattices in \(\mathrm{SL}_2(\mathbb{C})\) for strongly acyclic representations. In the paper under review, the author extends the above results to even symmetric power representations of the non-uniform arithmetic lattices in \(\mathrm{SL}_2(\mathbb{C})\) which come from Bianchi groups \(\mathrm{SL}_2(\mathbb{O}_D)\) where \(\mathbb{O}_D\) is the ring of integers of an imaginary quadratic field \(K = \mathbb{Q}(\sqrt{-D})\). More precisely, the author proves: Let \(\Gamma_0 \leq \mathrm{SL}_2(\mathbb{O}_D)\) be a torsion-free subgroup of finite index and \(\Gamma_i (i \geq 1)\), a sequence of subgroups of finite index in \(\Gamma_0\) satisfying \[ \lim_{i \rightarrow \infty} \frac{\kappa(\Gamma_i) \log [\Gamma_0: \Gamma_i]}{[\Gamma_0 : \Gamma_i]} = 0 \] where \(\kappa(\Gamma_i)\) denotes the number of cusps of \(\Gamma_i\). Further, assume that the lengths of the shortest nontrivial closed geodesics in the locally symmetric spaces \(\Gamma_i \backslash \mathbb{H}^3\) go to infinity and, \(\log |H_0(\Gamma_i, \bar{L}(m))| = o([\Gamma_0: \Gamma_i])\) for \(m \geq 2\), as \(i\) goes to infinity. Here, \(\bar{L}(m)=L(m) \oplus L^{\ast}(m)\) where \(L(m)\) is the canonical lattice in the real vector space \(\mathrm{Sym}^{2m}(\mathbb{C}^2)\) which is left invariant by \(\mathrm{SL}_2(\mathbb{O}_D)\). Then, for \(m \geq 3\), we have \[ \lim \inf_{i \rightarrow \infty} \frac{\log|H_1(\Gamma_i: \bar{L}(m))_{\mathrm{tors}}|}{[\Gamma_0 : \Gamma_i]} \geq \frac{2m(m+1)-12}{\pi} \operatorname{Vol}(\Gamma_0 \backslash \mathbb{H}^3). \] For congruence subgroups, the assumption on zero-th homology made above is known to hold. The method of proof is geometric. It exploits the relation between torsion in homology and Reidemeister torsion with coefficients in a complex flat vector bundle corresponding to the representation. The situation here is more complicated than the case of cocompact lattices. The author uses an expression of the normalized Reidemeister torsion in terms of special values of Ruelle zeta functions and show that the former grows exponentially in some towers of coverings. For the odd symmetric power representations, the author's results imply a suitably modified result necessitated by working with a certain spin structure of the underlying manifold. Recently, \textit{J. Raimbault} has obtained more general results based on different methods [``Analytic, Reidemeister and homological torsion for congruence three-manifolds'', Preprint, \url{arXiv:1307.2845}].