The cup product of Brooks quasimorphisms

We prove the vanishing of the cup product of the bounded cohomology classes associated to any two Brooks quasimorphisms on the free group. This is a consequence of the vanishing of the square of a universal class for tree automorphism groups.Comment: 7 page

Surface bundles over surfaces: new inequalities between signature, simplicial volume and Euler characteristic

We present three new inequalities tying the signature, the simplicial volume and the Euler characteristic of surface bundles over surfaces. Two of them are true for any surface bundle, while the third holds on a specific family of surface bundles, namely the ones that arise through a ramified covering. These are the main known examples of bundles with non-zero signature.Comment: 14 pages. Simplified the proof of Proposition 1.2. This is the final version, accepted in Geometriae Dedicat

The norm of the Euler class

We prove that the norm of the Euler class E for flat vector bundles is $2^{-n}$ (in even dimension $n$, since it vanishes in odd dimension). This shows that the Sullivan--Smillie bound considered by Gromov and Ivanov--Turaev is sharp. We construct a new cocycle representing E and taking only the two values $\pm 2^{-n}$; a null-set obstruction prevents any cocycle from existing on the projective space. We establish the uniqueness of an antisymmetric representative for E in bounded cohomology.Comment: 19 page

The simplicial volume of closed manifolds covered by H^2 x H^2

We compute the value of the simplicial volume for closed, oriented Riemannian manifolds covered by $\mathbb{H}^{2}\times\mathbb{H}^{2}$ explicitly, thus in particular for products of closed hyperbolic surfaces. This gives the first exact value of a nonvanishing simplicial volume for a manifold of nonconstant curvature.Comment: 19 pages; added consequences: Milnor-Wood type inequality, nonexistence of affine structur

A quantitative version of a theorem by Jungreis

A fundamental result by Gromov and Thurston asserts that, if M is a closed hyperbolic n-manifold, then the simplicial volume |M| of M is equal to vol(M)/v_n, where v_n is a constant depending only on the dimension of M. The same result also holds for complete finite-volume hyperbolic manifolds without boundary, while Jungreis proved that the ratio vol(M)/|M| is strictly smaller than v_n if M is compact with non-empty geodesic boundary. We prove here a quantitative version of Jungreis' result for n>3, which bounds from below the ratio |M|/vol(M) in terms of the ratio between the volume of the boundary of M and the volume of M. As a consequence, we show that a sequence {M_i} of compact hyperbolic n-manifolds with geodesic boundary is such that the limit of vol(M_i)/|M_i| equals v_n if and only if the volume of the boundary of M_i grows sublinearly with respect to the volume of the boundary of M_i. We also provide estimates of the simplicial volume of hyperbolic manifolds with geodesic boundary in dimension three.Comment: 2 figures, formerly part of arXiv:1208.054

Integrality of Volumes of Representations

Let M be an oriented complete hyperbolic n-manifold of finite volume. Using the definition of volume of a representation previously given by the authors in [BucherBurgerIozzi2013] we show that the volume of a representation of the fundamental group of M into the connected component of the isometry group of hyperbolic n-space, properly normalized, takes integer values if n=2m is at least 4. If M is not compact and 3-dimensional, it is known that the volume is not locally constant. In this case we give explicit examples of representations with volume as arbitrary as the volume of hyperbolic manifolds obtained from M via Dehn fillings.Comment: According to the suggestions of the referee, the article has been almost completely rewritten with the respect to the first versio

The simplicial volume of 3-manifolds with boundary

We provide sharp lower bounds for the simplicial volume of compact $3$-manifolds in terms of the simplicial volume of their boundaries. As an application, we compute the simplicial volume of several classes of $3$-manifolds, including handlebodies and products of surfaces with the interval. Our results provide the first exact computation of the simplicial volume of a compact manifold whose boundary has positive simplicial volume. We also compute the minimal number of tetrahedra in a (loose) triangulation of the product of a surface with the interval.Comment: 24 pages, 5 figures. Section 6 has been removed, and will appear in a separate paper by the same authors. This version has been accepted for publication by the Journal of Topolog