The L^2-Alexander torsion of 3-manifolds

Abstract

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 fibered manifolds. We furthermore show that given any irreducible 3-manifold there exists a coefficient system such that the corresponding $L^2$-torsion detects the Thurston norm.