Homotopy invariance of higher signatures and 3-manifold groups

Abstract

For closed oriented manifolds, we establish oriented homotopy invariance of higher signatures that come from the fundamental group of a large class of orientable 3-manifolds, including the ``piecewise geometric'' ones in the sense of Thurston. In particular, this class, that will be carefully described, is the class of all orientable 3-manifolds if the Thurston Geometrization Conjecture is true. In fact, for this type of groups, we show that the Baum-Connes Conjecture With Coefficients holds. The non-oriented case is also discussed.