nLab
Reidemeister torsion

Related concepts

• analytic torsion

References

An introduction and survey is in

• L. Nicolaescu, Notes on Reidemeister torsion (pdf)

The notion of Reidemeister torsion originates in

• Kurt Reidemeister, Automorphismen von Homotopiekettenringen, Math. Ann. 112 (1936), 586–593.

and was then extended in

• W. Franz, Über die Torsion einer Überdeckung, J. Reine Angew. Math. 173 (1935), 245–254.

and in

• Georges de Rham, Complexes á automorphismes et homéomorphie différentiable, Ann. Inst. Fourier (Grenoble) 2 (1950), 51–67.

Reidemeister torsion was identified with the Alexander polynomial in

• John Milnor, A duality theorem for the Reidemeister torsion, Ann. of Math. 76 (1962), 137–147.

Then

• Jeff Cheeger, Analytic torsion and the heat equation, Ann. of Math. 109 (1979), 259–322.

and

• W. Müller, Analytic torsion and R-torsion of Riemannian manifolds, Adv. in Math. 28 (1978), 233–305.

proved that it coincides with analytic torsion.