Related papers: $L^2$-Euler characteristics and the Thurston norm

We introduce $L^2$-Alexander torsions for 3-manifolds, which can be viewed as a generalization of the $L^2$-Alexander polynomial of Li--Zhang. We state the $L^2$-Alexander torsions for graph manifolds and we partially compute them for…

The Thurston norm of a 3-manifold measures the complexity of surfaces representing two-dimensional homology classes. We study the possible unit balls of Thurston norms of 3-manifolds $M$ with $b_1(M) = 2$, and whose fundamental groups admit…

We study the Thurston norm on the second homology of a 3-manifold M, which is the surface bundle over the circle with a pseudo-Anosov monodromy. A novelty of our approach consists in the application of the C*-algebras to a problem in…

Let $G$ be a $(2,m,n)$-group and let $x$ be the number of distinct primes dividing $\chi$, the Euler characteristic of $G$. We prove, first, that, apart from a finite number of known exceptions, a non-abelian simple composition factor $T$…

We introduce notions of finiteness obstruction, Euler characteristic, L^2-Euler characteristic, and M\"obius inversion for wide classes of categories. The finiteness obstruction of a category Gamma of type (FP) is a class in the projective…

We study incompressible surfaces constructed by Culler-Shalen theory in the context of twisted Alexander polynomials. For a $1$st cohomology class of a $3$-manifold the coefficients of twisted Alexander polynomials induce regular functions…

The Thurston norm is a seminorm on the second real homology group of a compact orientable 3-manifold. The unit ball of this norm is a convex polyhedron, whose shape's data (e.g. number of vertices, regularity) measures the complexity of the…

In an earlier paper (math.SG/0101206), we introduced Floer homology theories associated to closed, oriented three-manifolds Y and SpinC structures. In the present paper, we give calculations and study the properties of these invariants. The…

We give explicit computations of the $\Gamma$-Euler characteristic of several families of orbit space definable translation groupoids. These include the translation groupoids associated to finite-dimensional linear representations of the…

Let G be a countable discrete group and let M be a smooth proper cocompact G-manifold without boundary. The Euler operator defines via Kasparov theory an element, called the equivariant Euler class, in the equivariant K-homology of M. The…

Every element in the first cohomology group of a 3--manifold is dual to embedded surfaces. The Thurston norm measures the minimal `complexity' of such surfaces. For instance the Thurston norm of a knot complement determines the genus of the…

Manifolds admitting positive sectional curvature are conjectured to have rigid homotopical structure and, in particular, comparatively small Euler charateristics. In this article, we obtain upper bounds for the Euler characteristic of a…

About a decade ago Thurston proved that a vast collection of 3-manifolds carry metrics of constant negative curvature. These manifolds are thus elements of {\em hyperbolic geometry}, as natural as Euclid's regular polyhedra. For a closed…

Let $F$ be a probability distribution on $\mathbb{R}^d$ which admits a bounded density. We investigate the Euler characteristic of the \v{C}ech complex on $n$ points sampled from $F$ i.i.d. as $n\to\infty$ in the thermodynamic limit regime.…

The notion of the truncated Euler characteristic for Iwasawa modules is a generalization of the the usual Euler characteristic to the case when the cohomology groups are not finite. Let $p$ be an odd prime, $E_1$ and $E_2$ be elliptic…

A 1930s conjecture of Hopf states that an even-dimensional compact Riemannian manifold with positive sectional curvature has positive Euler characteristic. We prove this conjecture under the additional assumption that the isometry group has…

In the second paper [LZ24b] of this series, we obtained an analog of the prime number theorem for a class of branched covering maps on the $2$-sphere $S^2$ called expanding Thurston maps, which are topological models of some non-uniformly…

Topological invariants such as winding numbers and linking numbers appear as charges of topological solitons in diverse nonlinear physical systems described by a unit vector field defined on two and three dimensional manifolds. While the…

We obtain a dynamical--topological obstruction for the existence of isometric embedding of a Riemannian manifold-with-boundary $(M,g)$: if the first real homology of $M$ is nontrivial, if the centre of the fundamental group is trivial, and…

Bill Thurston proved that taut foliations of hyperbolic 3-manifolds have Euler classes of norm at most one, and conjectured that any integral second cohomology class of norm equal to one is realised as the Euler class of some taut…