Homological vanishing for the Steinberg representation II: reductive groups and integral conjectures

Abstract

We prove that the homology groups of any connected reductive group over a field with coefficients in the Steinberg representation vanish in a range. The generalizes work of Ash-Putman-Sam on the classical split groups. We state a connectivity conjecture that would allow us to prove such a vanishing result for $SL_n(\mathbb{Z})$, as was conjectured by Church-Farb-Putman. We prove some special cases of this conjecture and use it to refine known results about the first and second of homology of $SL_n(\mathbb{Z})$ with Steinberg coefficients.