Euler structures, the variety of representations and the Milnor–Turaev torsion
Euler structures, the variety of representations and the Milnor–Turaev torsion
In this paper we extend and Poincare dualize the concept of Euler structures, introduced by Turaev for manifolds with vanishing Euler-Poincare characteristic, to arbitrary manifolds. We use the Poincare dual concept, co-Euler structures, to remove all geometric ambiguities from the Ray-Singer torsion by providing a slightly modified object which is …