Finite-volume hyperbolic 3-manifolds are almost determined by their finite quotient groups (Q2689274)

The profinite completion of a finitely generated group is the inverse limit of all its finite quotients. Finitely generated groups are said to be profinitely isomorphic if their profinite completions are isomorphic, equivalently if they have the same finite quotients. A finitely generated, residually finite group is said to be profinitely rigid in a given class of groups if it is not profinitely isomorphic to any other (non-isomorphic) finitely generated, residually finite group in that class. It is called profinitely almost rigid in that class if there are only finitely many such groups. Profinite rigidity has been widely studied for the class of finitely generated 3-manifold groups, that is, fundamental groups of compact 3-manifolds, possibly with boundary. For example the fundamental group of the figure eight knot complement and more generally the fundamental groups of once-punctured torus bundles are profinitely rigid in this class. By work of Wilton and Zalesskii the question for non-geometric 3-manfifolds can be reduced to the geometric pieces in its JSJ-decomposition, the case of hyperbolic pieces being the hardest one. The paper under review does no show that in fact all fundamental groups of finite-volume hyperbolic 3-manifolds are profinitely almost rigid in the class of finitely generated 3-manifold groups. \textit{M. Boileau} and \textit{S. Friedl} [Ann. Math. Stud. 205, 21--44 (2020; Zbl 1452.57012)] have shown that profinite isomorphisms between fundamental groups of aspherical compact 3-manifolds of empty or tori boundary must induce isomorphisms of \(H_1(.,{\mathbb Z})\) preserving the Thurston norm and the fibered classes if the profinite isomorphism satisfies a certain ``regularity'' condition. In general, profinite isomorphisms between 3-manifold groups need not be regular. The present paper, however, shows that for finite-volume hyperbolic 3-manifolds the profinite isomorphisms always satisfy the weaker \(\hat{\mathbb Z}^*\)-regularity condition, and that this condition satisfies to prove again that one obtains an isomorphism of \(H_1(.,{\mathbb Z})\) preserving Thurston norm and fibered classes. Given a profinite isomorphism and a correspondence of fibered faces, in a further step the author establishes the invariance of the indexed periodic Nielsen numbers of the pseudo-Anosov monodromy for the corresponding fibrations. This implies the invariance of the pseudo-Anosov stretch factor, and the profinite almost rigidity follows from classical finiteness results in mapping class theory saying that a punctured hyperbolic surface has at most finitely many pseudo-Anosov maps with any given bound on the stretch factor.