English

Complexity of 3-manifolds obtained by Dehn filling

Geometric Topology 2025-03-12 v1

Abstract

Let MM be a compact 3--manifold with boundary a single torus. We present upper and lower complexity bounds for closed 3--manifolds obtained as even Dehn fillings of M.M. As an application, we characterise some infinite families of even Dehn fillings of MM for which our method determines the complexity of its members up to an additive constant. The constant only depends on the size of a chosen triangulation of MM, and the isotopy class of its boundary. We then show that, given a triangulation T\mathcal T of MM with 22--triangle torus boundary, there exist infinite families of even Dehn fillings of MM for which we can determine the complexity of the filled manifolds with a gap between upper and lower bound of at most 13T+7.13 |\mathcal T| + 7. This result is bootstrapped to obtain the gap as a function of the size of an ideal triangulation of the interior of MM, or the number of crossings of a knot diagram. We also show how to compute the gap for explicit families of fillings of knot complements in the three-sphere. The practicability of our approach is demonstrated by determining the complexity up to a gap of at most 10 for several infinite families of even fillings of the figure eight knot, the pretzel knot P(2,3,7)P(-2,3,7), and the trefoil.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2207.12066,
  title  = {Complexity of 3-manifolds obtained by Dehn filling},
  author = {William Jaco and J. Hyam Rubinstein and Jonathan Spreer and Stephan Tillmann},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2207.12066},
  year   = {2025}
}

Comments

23 pages, 10 figures, 3 tables