Residually finite rationally solvable groups and virtual fibring

Abstract

We show that a finitely generated residually finite rationally solvable (or RFRS) group $G$ is virtually fibred, in the sense that it admits a virtual surjection to $\mathbb{Z}$ with a finitely generated kernel, if and only if the first $L^2$-Betti number of $G$ vanishes. This generalises (and gives a new proof of) the analogous result of Ian Agol for fundamental groups of $3$-manifolds.