Related papers: Heegaard surfaces and the distance of amalgamation

We give several criteria on a closed, oriented 3-manifold that will imply that it is the boundary of a (simply connected) 4-manifold that admits infinitely many distinct smooth structures. We also show that any weakly fillable contact…

Let $T$ be a separating incompressible torus in a 3-manifold $M$. Assuming that a genus $g$ Heegaard splitting $V \cup_S W$ can be positioned nicely with respect to $T$ (e.g. $V \cup_S W$ is strongly irreducible), we obtain an upper bound…

Bordered Heegaard Floer homology is an invariant for three-manifolds with boundary. In particular, this invariant associates to a handle decomposition of a surface F a differential graded algebra, and to an arc slide between two handle…

For each $g \ge 2$, we prove existence of a computable constant $\epsilon(g) > 0$ such that if $S$ is a strongly irreducible Heegaard surface of genus $g$ in a complete hyperbolic 3-manifold $M$ and $\gamma$ is a simple geodesic of length…

It was shown by Bonahon-Otal and Hodgson-Rubinstein that any two genus-one Heegaard splittings of the same 3-manifold (typically a lens space) are isotopic. On the other hand, it was shown by Boileau, Collins and Zieschang that certain…

Bordered Heegaard Floer homology is a three-manifold invariant which associates to a surface F an algebra A(F) and to a three-manifold Y with boundary identified with F a module over A(F). In this paper, we establish naturality properties…

For a Heegaard surface F in a closed orientable 3-manifold M, H(M,F) = Diff(M)/Diff(M,F) is the space of Heegaard surfaces equivalent to the Heegaard splitting (M,F). Its path components are the isotopy classes of Heegaard splittings…

We examine three key conjectures in 3-manifold theory: the virtually Haken conjecture, the positive virtual b_1 conjecture and the virtually fibred conjecture. We explore the interaction of these conjectures with the following seemingly…

This paper explores connections between Heegaard genus, minimal surfaces, and pseudo-Anosov monodromies. Fixing a pseudo-Anosov map phi and an integer n, let M_n be the 3-manifold fibered over S^1 with monodromy phi^n. JH Rubinstein showed…

This paper studies Heegaard splittings of surface bundles via the curve complex of the fibre. The translation distance of the monodromy is the smallest distance it moves any vertex of the curve complex. We prove that the translation…

We study the existence of incompressible embeddings of surfaces into the genus two handlebody. We show that for every compact surface with boundary, orientable or not, there is an incompressible embedding of the surface into the genus two…

Given a $4$-manifold $\hat{M}$ and two homeomorphic surfaces $\Sigma_1, \Sigma_2$ smoothly embedded in $\hat{M}$ with genus more than 1, we remove the neighborhoods of the surfaces and obtain a new $4$-manifold $M$ from gluing two…

This is a companion paper to earlier work of the authors, which interprets the Heegaard Floer homology for a manifold with torus boundary in terms of immersed curves in a punctured torus. We prove a variety of properties of this invariant,…

The mapping class group $MCG(\Sigma_g)$ of a surface of genus $g$ has a long-history in topology and group theory. More recently, the mapping class group $MCG(V_g)$ of a handlebody $V_g$ of genus $g$ has become an interesting topic in the…

We show that the only closed 4-manifolds admitting genus two trisections are $S^2 \times S^2$ and connected sums of $S^1 \times S^3$, $\mathbb{CP}^2$, and $\overline{\mathbb{CP}}^2$ with two summands. Moreover, each of these manifolds…

If a 3--manifold $Y$ contains a non-separating sphere, then some twisted Heegaard Floer homology of $Y$ is zero. This simple fact allows us to prove several results about Dehn surgery on knots in such manifolds. Similar results have been…

We consider manifold-knot pairs $(Y,K)$ where $Y$ is a homology sphere that bounds a homology ball. We show that the minimum genus of a PL surface $\Sigma$ in a homology ball $X$ such that $\partial (X, \Sigma) = (Y, K)$ can be arbitrarily…

In this paper, we show that, for each non-trivial two bridge knot K and for each g > 2, every genus g Heegaard splitting of the exterior E(K) of K is reducible.

This paper gives a detailed construction of Seiberg-Witten-Floer homology for a closed oriented 3-manifold with a non-torsion $\spinc$ structure. Gluing formulae for certain 4-dimensional manifolds splitting along an embedded 3-manifold are…

We consider the family of Heegaard splittings of genus $g$ at least three which are defined via a glueing map that is the $n$-th power of the Dehn twist along a curve that satisfies a natural topological assumption, namely pared…