Reidemeister torsion form on character varieties (Q2663385)

In this paper the author defines the adjoint Reidemeister torsion tor\((M,Ad\circ\rho)\) on an augmented character variety of a compact oriented 3-manifold with toral boundary, related to earlier works, including [\textit{J. Porti}, Torsion de Reidemeister pour les variétés hyperboliques. Providence, RI: American Mathematical Society (AMS) (1997; Zbl 0881.57020)]. The author studies poles and vanishing orders of the torsion, giving that the torsion has poles only at singular points of the character variety. The author considers ideal points added after compactification of the character variety, connecting with Culler-Shalen's theory of essential surfaces associated with such points arising from action of the fundamental group of the manifold on a tree. The vanishing order of the torsion at an ideal point is bounded by the Euler characteristic of an essential surface associated to the ideal point. The results are verified with concrete calculations for exteriors of several knots with low crossing numbers.