Absolute torsion

Abstract

In this paper we use the results of our previous work in order to compute the phase of the torsion of an Euler structure in terms of its characteristic class. Also, we introduce here a new notion of an absolute torsion, which does not require a choice of any additional topological information (like an Euler structure). We prove that in the case of closed 3-manifolds obtained by 0-framed surgery on a classical knot the absolute torsion is equivalent to the Conway polynomial. Hence the absolute torsion can be viewed as a high-dimensional generalization of the Conway polynomial.