Minimal entropy and simplicial volume

We prove that MinEnt (Y) ∥Y∥ = MinEnt(X) ∥X∥, for manifolds Y whose fundamental group is a subexponential extension of the fundamental group of some negatively curved, locally symmetric manifold X. This is a particular case of a more general result holding for an arbitrary representation ρ : π₁ (Y) →π₁ (X), which relates the minimal entropy and the simplicial volume of X to some invariants of the couple (Y, ker (ρ)). Then, we discuss some applications to the minimal volume problem and to Einstein metrics. Received: 23 December 1998