English

A projective resolution of the symplectic Steinberg module

Algebraic Topology 2026-05-19 v2 Group Theory Geometric Topology

Abstract

Borel--Serre proved that for a number ring RR with fraction field KK, the symplectic group Sp2n(R)\text{Sp}_{2n}(R) is a virtual duality group of degree quadratic in nn, and that the symplectic Steinberg module St2nω(K)\text{St}^\omega_{2n}(K) is its dualizing module. We construct a projective resolution of this symplectic Steinberg module as an Sp2n(R)\text{Sp}_{2n}(R)-representation, that is similar in form to a resolution of Lee--Szczarba for the special linear group, but whose construction is more involved. When RR is a Euclidean number ring, we use this resolution to compute the top degree cohomology of principal level-pp congruence subgroups of Sp2n(R)\text{Sp}_{2n}(R), for primes pRp \in R such that the natural map R×(R/(p))×R^\times \to (R/(p))^\times is surjective.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2605.06499,
  title  = {A projective resolution of the symplectic Steinberg module},
  author = {Urshita Pal},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2605.06499},
  year   = {2026}
}

Comments

41 pages. Comments welcome! v2: some typos corrected; slightly rephrased some proposition statements

R2 v1 2026-07-01T12:55:28.754Z