We define the adjoint Reidemeister torsion as a differential form on the character variety of a compact
oriented
–manifold
with toral boundary, and prove it defines a rational volume form. Then we
show that the torsion form has poles only at singular points of the character
variety. In fact, if the singular point corresponds to a reducible character,
we show that the torsion has no pole under a generic hypothesis on the
Alexander polynomial; otherwise, we relate the order of the pole with the type of
singularity. Finally we consider the ideal points added after compactification of
the character variety. We bound the vanishing order of the torsion by the
Euler characteristic of an essential surface associated to the ideal point by
the Culler–Shalen theory. As a corollary we obtain an unexpected relation
between the topology of those surfaces and the topology of the character
variety.
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