Homology cobordism invariants and the Cochran-Orr-Teichner filtration of the link concordance group (Q2479720)

A real-valued homology cobordism invariant \(\rho_n\) for closed \((4k-1)\)-manifolds is defined by using the Cheeger-Gromov \(\rho\)-invariant and a new ``torsion-free derived series'' which can be defined for any group. Special information is obtained in the case of 3-manifolds. The invariant \(\rho_n\) is shown to be highly non-trivial. Using a construction developed by Cochran, Orr and Teichner, examples of 3-manifolds are produced for which \(\rho_n\) can be calculated. These authors also defined a filtration of the \(m\)-component string link concordance group -- the \((n)\)-solvable filtration -- on which the invariant \(\rho_n\) is applied in this paper. It can be shown that for \(m\geq 2\) the successive quotients of the filtration contain an infinitely generated subgroup. For knots \((m=1)\) the quotients are still infinite, but it is unknown whether the ranks are infinite for \(n\geq 3\). Similar results are obtained for a grope filtration.