Related papers: Arc distance equals level number

We show that the problem of deciding whether a knot in a fixed closed orientable 3-dimensional manifold bounds a surface of genus at most $g$ is in co-NP. This answers a question of Agol, Hass, and Thurston in 2002. Previously, this was…

Let $P, Q$ be Heegaard surfaces of a closed orientable 3-manifold. In this paper, we introduce a method for giving an upper bound of Hempel distance of $P$ by using the Reeb graph derived from a certain horizontal arc in the ambient space…

For any knot $K$ which bounds non-orientable and null-homologous surfaces $F$ in punctured $n\mathbb{C}P^2$, we construct a lower bound of the first Betti number of $F$ which consists of the signature of $K$ and the Heegaard Floer…

Let $M=H_{+}\cup_{S} H_{-}$ be a genus $g$ Heegaard splitting with Heegaard distance $n\geq \kappa+2$: (1) Let $c_{1}$, $c_{2}$ be two slopes in the same component of $\partial_{-}H_{-}$, such that the natural Heegaard splitting…

This article is the author's contribution to the volume "Problems on mapping class groups and related topics" which will be published in December 2006, with Benson Farb as Editor. Various individuals were invited by Farb to submit open…

Non-isotopic Heegaard splittings of non-minimal genus were known previously only for very special 3-manifolds. We show in this paper that they are in fact a wide spread phenomenon in 3-manifold theory: We exhibit a large class of knots and…

A knot in the 3-sphere in genus-1 1-bridge position (called a (1,1)-position) can be described by an element of the braid group of two points in the torus. Our main results tell how to translate between a braid group element and the…

This elementary article introduces easy-to-manage invariants of genus one knots in homology 3-spheres. To prove their invariance, we investigate properties of an invariant of 3-dimensional genus two homology handlebodies called the…

Let $H$ be a strongly irreducible Heegaard surface in a closed oriented Riemannian $3$-manifold. We prove that $H$ is either isotopic to a minimal surface of index at most one or isotopic to the boundary of a tubular neighborhood about a…

Meier and Zupan showed that every surface in the four-sphere admits a bridge trisection and can therefore be represented by three simple tangles. This raises the possibility of applying methods from link homology to knotted surfaces. We use…

We consider the set of connected surfaces in the 4-ball with boundary a fixed knot in the 3-sphere. We define the stabilization distance between two surfaces as the minimal $g$ such that we can get from one to the other using stabilizations…

J Hempel [Topology, 2001] showed that the set of distances of the Heegaard splittings (S,V, h^n(V)) is unbounded, as long as the stable and unstable laminations of h avoid the closure of V in PML(S). Here h is a pseudo-Anosov homeomorphism…

Let $P$ be a simple polygon, then the art gallery problem is looking for a minimum set of points (guards) that can see every point in $P$. We say two points $a,b\in P$ can see each other if the line segment $seg(a,b)$ is contained in $P$.…

Kevin Hartshorn showed that if a three-dimensional manifold $M$ admits a Heegaard surface $\Sigma$ with Hempel distance $d$ then every incompressible surface in $M$ has genus at least $\frac{d}{2}$. Scharlemann-Tomova generalized this,…

Suppose $K$ is a knot in a closed 3-manifold $M$ such that $\bar{M-N(K)}$ is irreducible. We show that for any positive integer $b$ there exists a triangulation of $\bar{M-N(K)}$ such that any weakly incompressible bridge surface for $K$ of…

For a knot $K\subset S^3$, its exterior $E(K) = S^3\backslash\eta(K)$ has a singular foliation by Seifert surfaces of $K$ derived from a circle-valued Morse function $f\colon E(K)\to S^1$. When $f$ is self-indexing and has no critical…

We prove a rigidity theorem for degree one maps between small 3-manifolds using Heegaard genus, and provide some applications and connections to Heegaard genus and Dehn surgery problems.

The theory of tunnel number 1 knots detailed in our previous paper, The tree of knot tunnels, provides a non-negative integer invariant called the depth of the tunnel. We give various results related to the depth invariant. Noting that it…

We construct knots in S^3 with Heegaard splittings of arbitrarily high distance, in any genus. As an application, for any positive integers t and b we find a tunnel number t knot in the three-sphere which has no (t,b)-decomposition.

We obtain new lower bounds of the minimal genus of a locally flat surface representing a 2-dimensional homology class in a topological 4-manifold with boundary, using the von Neumann-Cheeger-Gromov $\rho$-invariant. As an application our…