Related papers: The Thurston norm via Normal Surfaces
We study the connections between subsurface projections in curve and arc complexes in fibered 3-manifolds and Agol's veering triangulation. The main theme is that large-distance subsurfaces in fibers are associated to large simplicial…
A simple and efficient algorithm to numerically compute the genus of surfaces of three-dimensional objects using the Euler characteristic formula is presented. The algorithm applies to objects obtained by thresholding a scalar field in a…
Geometrization says `` any closed oriented three-manifold which is prime (not a connected sum) carries one of the eight Thurston geometries OR it has incompressible torus walls whose complementary components each carry one of four…
We give a formula for the Euler characteristic of a triangulated manifold of even dimension in terms of the numbers of even-dimensional faces only. The coefficients in this formula are universal (they do not depend on the dimension of the…
Using the virtual fibering theorem of Agol we show that a sutured 3-manifold $(M, R_+,R_-,\gamma)$ is taut if and only if the $\ell^2$-Betti numbers of the pair $(M,R_-)$ are zero. As an application we can characterize Thurston norm…
Discrete normal surfaces are normal surfaces whose intersection with each tetrahedron of a triangulation has at most one component. They are also natural Poincar\'e duals to 1-cocycles with $\ZZ/2\ZZ$-coefficients. For a fixed cohomology…
In 1986, W. Thurston introduced a (possibly degenerate) norm on the first cohomology group of a 3-manifold. Inspired by this definition, Turaev introduced in 2002 a analogous norm on the first cohomology group of a finite 2-complex. We show…
The Heegaard genus is a fundamental invariant of 3-manifolds. However, computing the Heegaard genus of a triangulated 3-manifold is NP-hard, and while algorithms exist, little work has been done in making such an algorithm efficient and…
A connected combinatorial 2-manifold is called degree-regular if each of its vertices have the same degree. A connected combinatorial 2-manifold is called weakly regular if it has a vertex-transitive automorphism group. Clearly, a weakly…
In an earlier paper (math.SG/0101206), we introduced Floer homology theories associated to closed, oriented three-manifolds Y and SpinC structures. In the present paper, we give calculations and study the properties of these invariants. The…
We introduce $L^2$-Alexander torsions for 3-manifolds, which can be viewed as a generalization of the $L^2$-Alexander polynomial of Li--Zhang. We state the $L^2$-Alexander torsions for graph manifolds and we partially compute them for…
In three dimensions, a `master theory' for all Thurston geometries requires imaginary flux. However, these geometries can be obtained from physical three-dimensional theories with various additional scalar fields, which can be interpreted…
We extend to the context of hyperbolic 3-manifolds with geodesic boundary Thurston's approach to hyperbolization by means of geometric triangulations. In particular, we introduce moduli for (partially) truncated hyperbolic tetrahedra, and…
We seek to connect ideas in the theory of bridge trisections with other well-studied facets of classical knotted surface theory. First, we show how the normal Euler number can be computed from a tri-plane diagram, and we use this to give a…
We establish combinatorial versions of various classical systolic inequalities. For a smooth triangulation of a closed smooth manifold, the minimal number of edges in a homotopically non-trivial loop contained in the $1$-skeleton gives an…
The triangulation complexity of a closed orientable 3-manifold is the minimal number of tetrahedra in any triangulation of the manifold. The main theorem of the paper gives upper and lower bounds on the triangulation complexity of any…
In this paper we describe a procedure for refining the given triangulation of a 3-manifold that scales the PL-metric according to a given weight function while creating no new normal surfaces. It is known that an incompressible surface $F$…
For a harmonic map $u:M^3\to S^1$ on a closed, oriented $3$--manifold, we establish the identity $$2\pi \int_{\theta\in S^1}\chi(\Sigma_{\theta})\geq \frac{1}{2}\int_{\theta\in S^1}\int_{\Sigma_{\theta}}(|du|^{-2}|Hess(u)|^2+R_M)$$ relating…
We continue the study of the twisted Novikov homology, introduced in our joint paper with H.Goda (arXiv:math.DG/0312374), and its generalizations. The main applications of the developed algebraic techniques are to the topology of…
For a large class of 3-manifolds with taut foliations, we construct an action of $\pi_1(M)$ on $\mathbb{R}$ by orientation preserving homeomorphisms which captures the transverse geometry of the leaves. This action is complementary to…