In mathematics, Reidemeister torsion (or R-torsion, or Reidemeister–Franz torsion) is a topological invariant of manifolds introduced by Kurt Reidemeister (Reidemeister (1935)) for 3-manifolds and generalized to higher dimensions by Franz (1935) and de Rham (1936). Analytic torsion (or Ray–Singer torsion) is an invariant of Riemannian manifolds defined by Ray and Singer (1971, 1973a, 1973b) as an analytic analogue of Reidemeister torsion. Cheeger (1977, 1979) and Müller (1978) proved Ray and Singer's conjecture that Reidemeister torsion and analytic torsion are the same for compact Riemannian manifolds.
Contents
- Definition of analytic torsion
- Definition of Reidemeister torsion
- A short history of Reidemeister torsion
- CheegerMller theorem
- References
Reidemeister torsion was the first invariant in algebraic topology that could distinguish between closed manifolds which are homotopy equivalent but not homeomorphic, and can thus be seen as the birth of geometric topology as a distinct field. It can be used to classify lens spaces.
Reidemeister torsion is closely related to Whitehead torsion; see (Milnor 1966). For later work on torsion see the books (Turaev 2002), (Nicolaescu 2002, 2003). And it had given one of important motivation to arithmetic topology. (Mazur)
Definition of analytic torsion
If M is a Riemannian manifold and E a vector bundle over M, then there is a Laplacian operator acting on the i-forms with values in E. If the eigenvalues on i-forms are λj then the zeta function ζi is defined to be
for s large, and this is extended to all complex s by analytic continuation. The zeta regularized determinant of the Laplacian acting on i-forms is
which is formally the product of the positive eigenvalues of the laplacian acting on i-forms. The analytic torsion T(M,E) is defined to be
Definition of Reidemeister torsion
Let
for all n. If we fix a cellular basis for
where A is the matrix of
Let
A short history of Reidemeister torsion
Reidemeister torsion was first used to combinatorially classify 3-dimensional lens spaces in (Reidemeister 1935) by Reidemeister, and in higher-dimensional spaces by Franz. The classification includes examples of homotopy equivalent 3-dimensional manifolds which are not homeomorphic – at the time (1935) the classification was only up to PL homeomorphism, but later (Brody 1960) showed that this was in fact a classification up to homeomorphism.
J. H. C. Whitehead defined the "torsion" of a homotopy equivalence between finite complexes. This is a direct generalization of the Reidemeister, Franz, and de Rham concept; but is a more delicate invariant. Whitehead torsion provides a key tool for the study of combinatorial or differentiable manifolds with nontrivial fundamental group and is closely related to the concept of "simple homotopy type." see (Milnor 1966)
In 1960 Milnor discovered the duality relation of torsion invariants of manifolds and show that the (twisted) Alexander polynomial of knots is the Reidemister torsion of its knot complement in S3. (Milnor 1962) For each q the Poincaré duality
and then we obtain
The representation of the fundamental group of knot complement plays a central role in them. It gives the relation between knot theory and torsion invariants.
Cheeger–Müller theorem
Let
and the formal adjoint
Assuming that
As before, we can therefore define a zeta function associated with the Laplacian
where
As in the case of an orthogonal representation, we define the analytic torsion
In 1971 D.B. Ray and I.M. Singer conjectured that