Nonacyclic Reidemeister torsions of manifolds of odd dimension

Abstract

Given an oriented closed manifold $M$ of odd dimension and a unitary representation $\rho : \pi_1(M) \ra \GL_n(\F)$, we define a Reidemeister torsion, even if the cohomology associated with $\rho$ is not acyclic. As corollaries, we introduce some topological invariants of $M$, which include the nonacyclic extensions of abelian torsions and the Alexander polynomials of links. Further, we propose a volume form of the $\SU(n)$-character varieties of $M$. Moreover, we compute the Reidemeister torsions of some representations of 3-manifolds and compare the works of Farber--Turaev.