Cellular chain complexes of universal covers of some 3-manifolds

Abstract

For a closed 3-manifold $M$ in a certain class, we give a presentation of the cellular chain complex of the universal cover of $M$. The class includes all surface bundles, some surgeries of knots in $S^3$, some cyclic branched cover of $S^3$, and some Seifert manifolds. In application, we establish a formula for calculating the linking form of a cyclic branched cover of $S^3$, and develop procedures of computing some Dijkgraaf-Witten invariants.