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Elementary amenable groups and 4-manifolds with Euler characteristic 0

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 April 2009

Jonathan A. Hillman
Affiliation:
University of Sydney Sydney, N.S.W. 2006, Australia
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Abstract

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We extend earlier work relating asphericity and Euler characteristics for finite complexes whose fundamental groups have nontrivial torsion free abelian normal subgroups. In particular a finitely presentable group which has a nontrivial elementary amenable subgroup whose finite subgroups have bounded order and with no nontrivial finite normal subgroup must have deficiency at most 1, and if it has a presentation of deficiency 1 then the corresponding 2-complex is aspherical. Similarly if the fundamental group of a closed 4-manifold with Euler characteristic 0 is virtually torsion free and elementary amenable then it either has 2 ends or is virtually an extension of Z by a subgroup of Q, or the manifold is asphencal and the group is virtually poly- Z of Hirsch length 4.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Australian Mathematical Society 1991

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