A surgery formula for the asymptotics of the higher dimensional Reidemeister torsion and Seifert fibered spaces

Abstract: We give a surgery formula for the asymptotic behavior of the sequence given by the logarithm of the higher dimensional Reidemeister torsion. Applying the resulting formula to Seifert fibered spaces, we show that the growth of the sequences has the same order as the indices and we give the explicit values for the limits of the leading coefficients. There are finitely many possibilities as the limits of the leading coefficients for a Seifert fibered space. We also show that the maximum is given by the product of (-log 2) and the Euler characteristic of the base orbifold for a Seifert fibered space. These limits of the leading coefficients give a locally constant function on a character variety. This function takes the maximum only on the top-dimensional components of the SU(2)-character varieties for Seifert fibered homology spheres.