Pre-Bloch invariants of 3-manifolds with boundary (Q2643065)

\textit{W. D. Neumann} and \textit{Jun Yang} [Duke Math. J. 96, 29--59 (1999; Zbl 0943.57008)] associated to an ideal triangulation of a finite volume hyperbolic \(3\)-manifold \(M\) an invariant \(\beta(M)\) in the Bloch group \({ \mathcal B}({\mathbb C})\) and showed that this invariant is independent of the triangulation and hence is indeed an invariant of \(M\). They also related \(\beta(M)\) to the volume and Chern-Simons invariant of \(M\). In the present paper the author considers a compact \(3\)-manifold \(M\) whose boundary consists of tori and surfaces \(S_i\) of genus \(\geq 2\). For each \(S_i\) he chooses a fixed pants decomposition \(C\) and an orientation \(\mathfrak{o}\) of the pants curves. A triangulation of each pair of pants into two ideal triangles determines a triangulation of \(\partial M\) which extends to a triangulation of \(M\). For a representation \(\rho\) of \(\pi_1 (M)\) whose restriction to each pair of pants is irreducible the author then defines an element \(\beta (M, \rho , C , \mathfrak{o} )\) of the pre-Bloch group \({ \mathcal P}({\mathbb C})\) and shows that it depends only on \( M, \rho , C , \mathfrak{o} \), but not on the triangulation of \(M\). He also uses this invariant to define volume on \( (M, \rho , C , \mathfrak{o} )\) and he describes variation of volume on the deformation space.