Pro-p groups and towers of rational homology spheres

Homological eigenvalues of mapping classes and torsion homology growth for fibered 3--manifolds

Let S be an orientable surface with negative Euler characteristic, let ψ\in\Mod(S) be a mapping class of S, and let T_ψ be the mapping torus of ψ. We study the action of lifts of ψon the homology of finite covers of S via the torsion homology growth of towers of finite covers of T_ψ. We show that ψadmits a lift to a finite cover with a homological eigenvalue of length greater than one if and only if the mapping torus T_ψ admits a finite cover X and a certain tower of abelian covers which have exponential torsion homology growth. We show that the existence of such a lift of ψis intrinsic to T_ψ…

Volume gradients and homology in towers of residually-free groups

We study the asymptotic growth of homology groups and the cellular volume of classifying spaces as one passes to normal subgroups $G_n<G$ of increasing finite index in a fixed finitely generated group $G$, assuming $\bigcap_n G_n =1$. We focus in particular on finitely presented residually free groups, calculating their $\ell_2$ betti numbers, rank gradient and asymptotic deficiency. If $G$ is a limit group and $K$ is any field, then for all $j\ge 1$ the limit of $\dim H_j(G_n,K)/[G,G_n]$ as $n\to\infty$ exists and is zero except for $j=1$, where it equals $-χ(G)$. We prove a homotopical versi…

Automorphic forms and rational homology 3--spheres

We investigate a question of Cooper adjacent to the Virtual Haken Conjecture. Assuming certain conjectures in number theory, we show that there exist hyperbolic rational homology 3-spheres with arbitrarily large injectivity radius. These examples come from a tower of abelian covers of an explicit arithmetic 3-manifold. The conjectures we must assume are the Generalized Riemann Hypothesis and a mild strengthening of results of Taylor et al on part of the Langlands Program for GL_2 of an imaginary quadratic field. The proof of this theorem involves ruling out the existence of an irreducible two …

Exponential growth of torsion in Abelian coverings

We study the growth of the order of torsion subgroups of the homology in a tower of finite abelian coverings. In particular, we prove that it is exponential for when the tower converges to the maximal free abelian cover of a link complement when the first nonzero Alexander polynomial has positive logarithmic Mahler measure.

The Stable Homology of Congruence Subgroups

In a previous paper, the author (together with Matthew Emerton) proved that the completed cohomology groups of SL_N(Z) are stable in fixed degree as N goes to infinity (Z may be replaced by the ring O_F of integers of any number field). In this paper, we relate these completed cohomology groups to K-theory and Galois cohomology. Various consequences include showing that Borel's stable classes become infinitely p-divisible up the p-congruence tower if and only if a certain p-adic zeta value is non-zero. We use our results to compute H_2(Gamma_N(p),F_p) (for sufficiently large N) where Gamma_N(p…

Embedding calculus knot invariants are of finite type

We show that the map on components from the space of classical long knots to the n-th stage of its Goodwillie-Weiss embedding calculus tower is a map of monoids whose target is an abelian group and which is invariant under clasper surgery. We deduce that this map on components is a finite type-(n-1) knot invariant. We also compute the second page in total degree zero for the spectral sequence converging to the components of this tower as Z-modules of primitive chord diagrams, providing evidence for the conjecture that the tower is a universal finite-type invariant over the integers. Key to the…

The relative Whitney trick and its applications

We introduce a geometric operation, which we call the relative Whitney trick, that removes a single double point between properly immersed surfaces in a $4$-manifold with boundary. Using the relative Whitney trick we prove that every link in a homology sphere is homotopic to a link that is topologically slice in a contractible topological $4$-manifold. We further prove that any link in a homology sphere is order $k$ Whitney tower concordant to a link in $S^3$ for all $k$. Finally, we explore the minimum Gordian distance from a link in $S^3$ to a homotopically trivial link. Extending this notio…

稳定嵌入塔与构型空间上的操作子结构

The stable embedding tower and operadic structures on configuration spaces

本文利用流形演算构造稳定嵌入塔，证明其各层是目标流形的切向同伦不变量，并通过引入 Poincare-Koszul 操作子研究 $E_n$ 操作子诱导的构型空间同调上的 Poisson 与 Lie 操作子作用。

The structure of the rational concordance group of knots

We study the group of rational concordance classes of codimension two knots in rational homology spheres. We give a full calculation of its algebraic theory by developing a complete set of new invariants. For computation, we relate these invariants with limiting behaviour of the Artin reciprocity over an infinite tower of number fields and analyze it using tools from algebraic number theory. In higher dimensions it classifies the rational concordance group of knots whose ambient space satisfies a certain cobordism theoretic condition. In particular, we construct infinitely many torsion element…

On the growth of Betti numbers in $p$-adic analytic towers

We study the asymptotic growth of Betti numbers in tower of finite covers and provide simple proofs of approximation results, which were previously obtained by Calegari-Emerton, in the generality of arbitrary p-adic analytic towers of covers. Further, we also obtain partial results about arbitrary pro-$p$ towers.

Unknotted gropes, Whitney towers, and doubly slicing knots

We study the structure of the exteriors of gropes and Whitney towers in dimension 4, focusing on their fundamental groups. In particular we introduce a notion of unknottedness of gropes and Whitney towers in the 4-sphere. We prove that various modifications of gropes and Whitney towers preserve the unknottedness and do not enlarge the fundamental group. We exhibit handlebody structures of the exteriors of gropes and Whitney towers constructed by earlier methods of Cochran, Teichner, Horn, and the first author, and use them to construct examples of unknotted gropes and Whitney towers. As an app…

Nonpositive Towers in Bing's Neighbourhood

Every 2-dimensional spine of an aspherical 3-manifold has the nonpositive towers property, but every collapsed 2-dimensional spine of a 3-ball containing a 2-cell has an immersed sphere.

Isospectral towers of Riemannian Manifolds

In this paper we construct, for n >= 2, arbitrarily large families of infinite towers of compact, orientable Riemannian n-manifolds which are isospectral but not isometric at each stage. In dimensions two and three, the towers produced consist of hyperbolic 2-manifolds and hyperbolic 3-manifolds, and in these cases we show that the isospectral towers do not arise from Sunada's method.

Rank gradient in co-final towers of certain Kleinian groups

We prove that if the fundamental group of an orientable finite volume hyperbolic 3-manifold has finite index in the reflection group of a right-angled ideal polyhedra in $\mathbb{H}^3$ then it has a co-final tower of finite sheeted covers with positive rank gradient. The manifolds we provide are also known to have co-final towers of covers with zero rank gradient.