Integral foliated simplicial volume of aspherical manifolds (Q503264)

Simplicial volume is a homotopy invariant of manifolds, measuring the complexity of singular fundamental cycles with \(\mathbb R\)-coefficients. The simplicial volume of an oriented closed connected \(n\)-manifold \(M\) is defined as \( \|M\|=\inf\{|c|_1:\;c\in C_n(M,\mathbb R), \partial c=0, [c]=[M]_{\mathbb R}\}\in\mathbb R^+_0, \) where \(|c|_1\) denotes the \(\ell^1\)-norm of the singular chain \(c\) with respect to the basis of all singular \(n\)-simplices in \(M\). Despite its topological definition, simplicial volume carries geometric information and allows for a rich interplay between topological and geometric properties of manifolds. In [Geometric group theory. Volume 2: Asymptotic invariants of infinite groups. Proceedings of the symposium held at the Sussex University, Brighton, July 14-19, 1991. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press (1993; Zbl 0841.20039)], \textit{M.~Gromov} formulated the problem on simplicial volume on oriented closed connected aspherical manifolds by asking whether \(\|M\|\) implies the vanishing of \(\chi(M)\) and \(L^2\)-Betti numbers of \(M\). To address these problems and to give an affirmative answer, one option is to replace simplicial volume by a suitable integral approximation, and then to use a Poincaré duality argument to bound \(L^2\)-Betti numbers in terms of this integral approximation. One such integral approximation is stable integral simplicial volume that is defined on an oriented closed connected manifold \(M\) as \( \|M\|^\infty_{\mathbb Z}=\inf\{\frac1d\|\overline M\|_{\mathbb Z}:\;d\in\mathbb N,\;\overline M\to M\;\text{is a }d\)-sheeted covering