A gluing formula for the analytic torsion on hyperbolic manifolds with cusps

Abstract

For an odd-dimensional oriented hyperbolic manifold with cusps and strongly acyclic coefficient systems we define the Reidemeister torsion of the Borel-Serre compactification of the manifold using bases of cohomology classes defined via Eisenstein series by the method of Harder. In the main result of this paper we relate this combinatorial torsion to the regularized analytic torsion. Together with results on the asymptotic behaviour of the regularized analytic torsion, established previously, this should have applications to study the growth of torsion in the cohomology of arithmetic groups. Our main result is established via a gluing formula and here our approach is heavily inspired by a recent paper of Lesch.