On singular generalizations of the Singer–Hopf conjecture

The Singer–Hopf conjecture predicts the sign of the topological Euler characteristic of a closed aspherical manifold. In this note, we propose singular generalizations of the Singer–Hopf conjecture, formulated in terms of the Euler–Mather characteristic, intersection homology Euler characteristic and, resp., virtual Euler characteristic of a closed irreducible subvariety of an aspherical complex projective manifold. We prove these new conjectures under the assumption that the cotangent bundle of the ambient variety is numerically effective (nef), or, more generally, when the ambient manifold admits a finite morphism to a complex projective manifold with a nef cotangent bundle. The main ingredients in the proof are the semi‐positivity properties of nef vector bundles together with a topological version of the Riemann–Roch theorem, proved by Kashiwara.