English

Generating the Goeritz group of $S^3$

Geometric Topology 2024-08-26 v4

Abstract

In 1980 J. Powell \cite{Po} proposed that five specific elements sufficed to generate the Goeritz group for any genus Heegaard splitting of the 3-sphere. Here we prove that a natural expansion of Powell's proposed generators, to include all eyeglass twists and all topological conjugates of Powell's generators does suffice.

Cite

@article{arxiv.2011.10613,
  title  = {Generating the Goeritz group of $S^3$},
  author = {Martin Scharlemann},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2011.10613},
  year   = {2024}
}

Comments

v.4 contains minor clarifications throughout. To appear in Journal of the Association for Mathematical Research

R2 v1 2026-06-23T20:24:21.293Z