We examine 2-complexes $X$ with the property that for any compact connected $Y$, and immersion $Y\rightarrow X$, either $\unicode[STIX]{x1D712}(Y)\leqslant 0$ or $\unicode[STIX]{x1D70B}_{1}Y=1$. The mapping torus of an endomorphism of a free group has this property. Every irreducible 3-manifold with boundary has a spine with this property. We show that the fundamental group of any 2-complex with this property is locally indicable. We outline evidence supporting the conjecture that this property implies coherence. We connect the property to asphericity. Finally, we prove coherence for 2-complexes with a stricter form of this property. As a corollary, every one-relator group with torsion is coherent.

We define and study generalizations of simplicial volume over arbitrary seminormed rings with a focus on p-adic simplicial volumes. We investigate the dependence on the prime and establish homology bounds in terms of p-adic simplicial volumes. As the main examples, we compute the weightless and p-adic simplicial volumes of surfaces. This is based on an alternative way to calculate classical simplicial volume of surfaces without hyperbolic straightening and shows that surfaces satisfy mod p and p-adic approximation of simplicial volume.

Diagrammatic reducibility DR and its generalization, vertex asphericity VA, are combinatorial tools developed for detecting asphericity of a 2-complex. Here we present tests for a relative version of VA that apply to pairs of 2-complexes $(L,K)$ , where K is a subcomplex of L. We show that a relative weight test holds for injective labeled oriented trees, implying that they are VA and hence aspherical. This strengthens a result obtained by the authors in 2017 and simplifies the original proof.

The simplicial complexity is an invariant for finitely presentable groups which was recently introduced by Babenko, Balacheff, and Bulteau to study systolic area. The simplicial complexity κ(G) was proved to be a good approximation of the systolic area σ(G) for large values of κ(G). In this paper we compute the simplicial complexity of all surface groups (both in the orientable and in the non-orientable case). This partially settles a problem raised by Babenko, Balacheff, and Bulteau. We also prove that κ(G * ℤ) = κ(G) for any surface group G. This provides the first partial evidence in favor of the conjecture of the stability of the simplicial complexity under free product with free groups. The general stability problem, both for simplicial complexity and for systolic area, remains open.

We present a new test for studying asphericity and diagrammatic reducibility of group presentations. Our test can be applied to prove diagrammatic reducibility in cases where the classical weight test fails. We use this criterion to generalize results of J. Howie and S.M. Gersten on asphericity of LOTs and of Adian presentations, and derive new results on solvability of equations over groups. We also use our methods to investigate a conjecture of S.V. Ivanov related to Kaplansky's problem on zero divisors: we strengthen Ivanov's result for locally indicable groups and prove a weak version of the conjecture.

We make some elementary observations concerning subcritically Stein fillable contact structures on 5-manifolds. Specifically, we determine the diffeomorphism type of such contact manifolds in the case where the fundamental group is finite cyclic, and we show that on the 5-sphere, the standard contact structure is the unique subcritically fillable one. More generally, it is shown that subcritically fillable contact structures on simply connected 5-manifolds are determined by their underlying almost contact structure. Along the way, we discuss the homotopy classification of almost contact structures.

Using the notion of discrete Morse function introduced by R. Forman for finite cw-complexes, we generalize it to the infinite 2-dimensional case in order to get the corresponding version of the well-known discrete Morse inequalities on a non-compact triangulated 2-manifold without boundary and with finite homology. We also extend them for the more general case of a non-compact triangulated 2-pseudo-manifold with a finite number of critical simplices and finite homology.

We introduce the concept of ‘geometrical spine’ for 3-manifolds with natural metrics, in particular, for lens manifolds. We show that any spine of $L_{p,q}$ that is close enough to its geometrical spine contains at least $E(p,q)-3$ vertices, which is exactly the conjectured value for the complexity $c(L_{p,q})$. As a byproduct, we find the minimal rotation distance (in the Sleator–Tarjan–Thurston sense) between a triangulation of a regular $p$-gon and its image under rotation.

We pose some graph theoretic conjectures about duality and the diameter of maximal trees in planar graphs, and we give innovations in the following two topics in geometric group theory, where the conjectures have applications.

Central extensions. We describe an electrostatic model concerning how van Kampen diagrams change when one takes a central extension of a group. Modulo the conjectures, this leads to a new proof that finitely generated class $c$ nilpotent groups admit degree $c+1$ polynomial isoperimetric functions.

Filling functions. We collate and extend results about interrelationships between filling functions for finite presentations of groups. We use the electrostatic model in proving that the gallery length filling function, which measures the diameter of the duals of diagrams, is qualitatively the same as a filling function DlogA, concerning the sum of the diameter with the logarithm of the area of a diagram. We show that the conjectures imply that the space-complexity filling function filling length essentially equates to gallery length. We give linear upper bounds on these functions for a number of classes of groups including fundamental groups of compact geometrizable 3-manifolds, certain graphs of groups, and almost convex groups. Also we define restricted filling functions which concern diagrams with uniformly bounded vertex valence, and we show that, assuming the conjectures, they reduce to just two filling functions—the analogues of non-deterministic space and time.

In a study of the word problem for groups, R. J. Thompson considered a certain group $F$ of self-homeomorphisms of the Cantor set and showed, among other things, that $F$ is finitely presented. Using results of K. S. Brown and R. Geoghegan, M. N. Dyer showed that $F$ is the fundamental group of a finite two-complex ${{Z}^{2}}$ having Euler characteristic one and which is Cockcroft, in the sense that each map of the two-sphere into ${{Z}^{2}}$ is homologically trivial. We show that no proper covering complex of ${{Z}^{2}}$ is Cockcroft. A general result on Cockcroft properties implies that no proper regular covering complex of any finite two-complex with fundamental group $F$ is Cockcroft.

In this work we study the geodesic flow on n-dimensional ideal polyhedra and establish classical (for manifolds of negative curvature) results concerning the distribution of closed orbits of the flow.

We show that every Turaev-Viro invariant for 3-manifolds is a sum of three new invariants and discuss their properties. We also find a solution of a conjecture of L. H. Kauffman and S. Lins. Tables of the invariants for closed orientable 3-manifolds of complexity ≤ 3 are presented at the end of the paper.

We show that, if [s,t][u, v] = x2 in a free group, x need not be a commutator. We arrive at our example by use of a result of D. Piollet which characterizes solutions of such equations using an algebraic interpretation of the mapping class group of the corresponding surface.