A long standing problem, which has its roots in low-dimensional homotopy theory, is to classify all finite groups G for which the integral group ring ℤG has stably free cancellation (SFC). We extend results of R. G. Swan by giving a condition for SFC and use this to show that ℤG has SFC provided at most one copy of the quaternions ℍ occurs in the Wedderburn decomposition of the real group ring ℝG. This generalises the Eichler condition in the case of integral group rings.

Infinite product operations are at the forefront of the study of homotopy groups of Peano continua and other locally path-connected spaces. In this paper, we define what it means for a space X to have infinitely commutative $\pi _1$ -operations at a point $x\in X$ . Using a characterization in terms of the Specker group, we identify several natural situations in which this property arises. Maintaining a topological viewpoint, we define the transfinite abelianization of a fundamental group at any set of points $A\subseteq X$ in a way that refines and extends previous work on the subject.

We say a group G satisfies properties (M) and (NM) if every nontrivial finite subgroup of G is contained in a unique maximal finite subgroup, and every nontrivial finite maximal subgroup is self-normalizing. We prove that the Bredon cohomological dimension and the virtual cohomological dimension coincide for groups that admit a cocompact model for EG and satisfy properties (M) and (NM). Among the examples of groups satisfying these hypothesis are cocompact and arithmetic Fuchsian groups, one-relator groups, the Hilbert modular group, and 3-manifold groups.

We show that if a partially hyperbolic diffeomorphism of a Seifert manifold induces a map in the base which has a pseudo-Anosov component then it cannot be dynamically coherent. This extends [C. Bonatti, A. Gogolev, A. Hammerlindl and R. Potrie. Anomalous partially hyperbolic diffeomorphisms III: Abundance and incoherence. Geom. Topol., to appear] to the whole isotopy class. We relate the techniques to the study of certain partially hyperbolic diffeomorphisms in hyperbolic 3-manifolds performed in [T. Barthelmé, S. Fenley, S. Frankel and R. Potrie. Partially hyperbolic diffeomorphisms homotopic to the identity in dimension 3, part I: The dynamically coherent case. Preprint, 2019, arXiv:1908.06227; Partially hyperbolic diffeomorphisms homotopic to the identity in dimension 3, part II: Branching foliations. Preprint, 2020, arXiv: 2008.04871]. The appendix reviews some consequences of the Nielsen–Thurston classification of surface homeomorphisms for the dynamics of lifts of such maps to the universal cover.

We prove several general conditional convergence results on ergodic averages for horocycle and geodesic subgroups of any continuous $\operatorname {SL}(2, \mathbb {R})$ -action on a locally compact space. These results are motivated by theorems of Eskin, Mirzakhani and Mohammadi on the $\operatorname {SL}(2, \mathbb {R})$ -action on the moduli space of Abelian differentials. By our argument we can derive from these theorems an improved version of the ‘weak convergence’ of push-forwards of horocycle measures under the geodesic flow and a short proof of weaker versions of theorems of Chaika and Eskin on Birkhoff genericity and Oseledets regularity in almost all directions for the Teichmüller geodesic flow.

Let G be a nontrivial torsion-free group and $s\left( t \right) = {g_1}{t^{{\varepsilon _1}}}{g_2}{t^{{\varepsilon _2}}} \ldots {g_n}{t^{{\varepsilon _n}}} = 1\left( {{g_i} \in G,{\varepsilon_i} = \pm 1} \right)$ be an equation over G containing no blocks of the form ${t^{- 1}}{g_i}{t^{ - 1}},{g_i} \in G$. In this paper, we show that $s\left( t \right) = 1$ has a solution over G provided a single relation on coefficients of s(t) holds. We also generalize our results to equations containing higher powers of t. The later equations are also related to Kaplansky zero-divisor conjecture.

We show that the only way of changing the framing of a link by ambient isotopy in an oriented $3$ -manifold is when the manifold has a properly embedded non-separating $S^{2}$ . This change of framing is given by the Dirac trick, also known as the light bulb trick. The main tool we use is based on McCullough’s work on the mapping class groups of $3$ -manifolds. We also relate our results to the theory of skein modules.

We examine 2-complexes $X$ with the property that for any compact connected $Y$, and immersion $Y\rightarrow X$, either $\unicode[STIX]{x1D712}(Y)\leqslant 0$ or $\unicode[STIX]{x1D70B}_{1}Y=1$. The mapping torus of an endomorphism of a free group has this property. Every irreducible 3-manifold with boundary has a spine with this property. We show that the fundamental group of any 2-complex with this property is locally indicable. We outline evidence supporting the conjecture that this property implies coherence. We connect the property to asphericity. Finally, we prove coherence for 2-complexes with a stricter form of this property. As a corollary, every one-relator group with torsion is coherent.

We consider the question of when a rational homology $3$-sphere is rational homology cobordant to a connected sum of lens spaces. We prove that every rational homology cobordism class in the subgroup generated by lens spaces is represented by a unique connected sum of lens spaces whose first homology group injects in the first homology group of any other element in the same class. As a first consequence, we show that several natural maps to the rational homology cobordism group have infinite-rank cokernels. Further consequences include a divisibility condition between the determinants of a connected sum of $2$-bridge knots and any other knot in the same concordance class. Lastly, we use knot Floer homology combined with our main result to obstruct Dehn surgeries on knots from being rationally cobordant to lens spaces.

A slope r is called a left orderable slope of a knot $K \subset S^3$ if the 3-manifold obtained by r-surgery along K has left orderable fundamental group. Consider double twist knots $C(2m, \pm 2n)$ and $C(2m+1, -2n)$ in the Conway notation, where $m \ge 1$ and $n \ge 2$ are integers. By using continuous families of hyperbolic ${\mathrm {SL}}_2(\mathbb {R})$ -representations of knot groups, it was shown in [8, 16] that any slope in $(-4n, 4m)$ (resp. $ [0, \max \{4m, 4n\})$ ) is a left orderable slope of $C(2m, 2n)$ (resp. $C(2m, - 2n)$ ) and in [6] that any slope in $(-4n,0]$ is a left orderable slope of $C(2m+1,-2n)$ . However, the proofs of these results are incomplete, since the continuity of the families of representations was not proved. In this paper, we complete these proofs, and, moreover, we show that any slope in $(-4n, 4m)$ is a left orderable slope of $C(2m+1,-2n)$ detected by hyperbolic ${\mathrm {SL}}_2(\mathbb {R})$ -representations of the knot group.

We construct quantum invariants of balanced sutured 3-manifolds with a ${\text {Spin}^c}$ structure out of an involutive (possibly nonunimodular) Hopf superalgebra H. If H is the Borel subalgebra of ${U_q(\mathfrak {gl}(1|1))}$ , we show that our invariant is computed via Fox calculus, and it is a normalization of Reidemeister torsion. The invariant is defined via a modification of a construction of Kuperberg, where we use the ${\text {Spin}^c}$ structure to take care of the nonunimodularity of H or $H^{*}$ .

We prove a “splicing formula” for the LMO invariant, which is the universal finite-type invariant of rational homology three-spheres. Specifically, if a rational homology three-sphere M is obtained by gluing the exteriors of two framed knots $K_1 \subset M_1$ and $K_2\subset M_2$ in rational homology three-spheres, our formula expresses the LMO invariant of M in terms of the Kontsevich–LMO invariants of $(M_1,K_1)$ and $(M_2,K_2)$ . The proof uses the techniques that Bar-Natan and Lawrence developed to obtain a rational surgery formula for the LMO invariant. In low degrees, we recover Fujita’s formula for the Casson–Walker invariant, and we observe that the second term of the Ohtsuki series is not additive under “standard” splicing. The splicing formula also works when each $M_i$ comes with a link $L_i$ in addition to the knot $K_i$ , hence we get a “satellite formula” for the Kontsevich–LMO invariant.

We define and study generalizations of simplicial volume over arbitrary seminormed rings with a focus on p-adic simplicial volumes. We investigate the dependence on the prime and establish homology bounds in terms of p-adic simplicial volumes. As the main examples, we compute the weightless and p-adic simplicial volumes of surfaces. This is based on an alternative way to calculate classical simplicial volume of surfaces without hyperbolic straightening and shows that surfaces satisfy mod p and p-adic approximation of simplicial volume.

We introduce a generalization of the Lisca–Ozsváth–Stipsicz–Szabó Legendrian invariant ${\mathfrak L}$ to links in every rational homology sphere, using the collapsed version of link Floer homology. We represent a Legendrian link L in a contact 3-manifold ${(M,\xi)}$ with a diagram D, given by an open book decomposition of ${(M,\xi)}$ adapted to L, and we construct a chain complex ${cCFL^-(D)}$ with a special cycle in it denoted by ${\mathfrak L(D)}$ . Then, given two diagrams ${D_1}$ and ${D_2}$ which represent Legendrian isotopic links, we prove that there is a map between the corresponding chain complexes that induces an isomorphism in homology and sends ${\mathfrak L(D_1)}$ into ${\mathfrak L(D_2)}$ . Moreover, a connected sum formula is also proved and we use it to give some applications about non-loose Legendrian links; that are links such that the restriction of ${\xi}$ on their complement is tight.

We show that every coarse moduli space, parametrizing complex special linear rank-2 local systems with fixed boundary traces on a surface with nonempty boundary, is log Calabi–Yau in that it has a normal projective compactification with trivial log canonical divisor. We connect this to a novel symmetry of generating series for counts of essential multicurves on the surface.

We show that standard cyclic actions on Brieskorn homology 3-spheres with non-empty fixed set do not extend smoothly to any contractible smooth 4-manifold it may bound. The quotient of any such extension would be an acyclic 4-manifold with boundary a related Brieskorn homology sphere. We briefly discuss well-known invariants of homology spheres that obstruct acyclic bounding 4-manifolds and then use a method based on equivariant Yang–Mills moduli spaces to rule out extensions of the actions.

We use the divide-and-conquer and scanning algorithms for calculating Khovanov cohomology directly on the Lee- or Bar-Natan deformations of the Khovanov complex to give an alternative way to compute Rasmussen s-invariants of knots. By disregarding generators away from homological degree 0, we can considerably improve the efficiency of the algorithm. With a slight modification, we can also apply it to a refinement of Lipshitz–Sarkar.

In 1969, Baumslag introduced a family of parafree groups Gi,j which share many properties with the free group of rank 2. The isomorphism problem for the family Gi,j is known to be difficult; a few small partial results have been found so far. In this paper, we compute the twisted Alexander ideals of the groups Gi,j associated with non-abelian representations into $SL(2,{\mathbb Z}_2)$. Using the twisted Alexander ideals, we prove that several pairs of groups among Gi,j are not isomorphic. As a consequence, we solve the isomorphism problem for sub-families containing infinitely many groups Gi,j.

Let $M$ be a closed, oriented, and connected Riemannian $n$-manifold, for $n\geq 2$, which is not a rational homology sphere. We show that, for a non-constant and non-injective uniformly quasiregular self-map $f:M\rightarrow M$, the topological entropy $h(f)$ is $\log \deg f$. This proves Shub’s entropy conjecture in this case.

Diagrammatic reducibility DR and its generalization, vertex asphericity VA, are combinatorial tools developed for detecting asphericity of a 2-complex. Here we present tests for a relative version of VA that apply to pairs of 2-complexes $(L,K)$ , where K is a subcomplex of L. We show that a relative weight test holds for injective labeled oriented trees, implying that they are VA and hence aspherical. This strengthens a result obtained by the authors in 2017 and simplifies the original proof.