Stability in the high-dimensional cohomology of congruence subgroups

Abstract

We prove a representation stability result for the codimension-one cohomology of the level three congruence subgroup of $\mathbf{SL}_n(\mathbb{Z})$. This is a special case of a question of Church-Farb-Putman which we make more precise. Our methods involve proving several finiteness properties of the Steinberg module for the group $\mathbf{SL}_n(K)$ for $K$ a field. This also lets us give a new proof of Ash-Putman-Sam's homological vanishing theorem for the Steinberg module. We also prove an integral refinement of Church-Putman's homological vanishing theorem for the Steinberg module for the group $\mathbf{SL}_n(\mathbb{Z})$.