Related papers: Quadrilateral-octagon coordinates for almost norma…

The existence of orthogonal local coordinates is a generalization of the manifold being conformally flat. It is always possible to construct orthogonal coordinates on 2-manifolds, using geometric normal coordinates or isothermal…

In three-dimensional computational topology, the theory of normal surfaces is a tool of great theoretical and practical significance. Although this theory typically leads to exponential time algorithms, very little is known about how these…

It is important to have fast and effective methods for simplifying 3-manifold triangulations without losing any topological information. In theory this is difficult: we might need to make a triangulation super-exponentially more complex…

About a decade ago Thurston proved that a vast collection of 3-manifolds carry metrics of constant negative curvature. These manifolds are thus elements of {\em hyperbolic geometry}, as natural as Euclid's regular polyhedra. For a closed…

3-manifolds are commonly represented as triangulations, consisting of abstract tetrahedra whose triangular faces are identified in pairs. The combinatorial sparsity of a triangulation, as measured by the treewidth of its dual graph, plays a…

Following Matveev, a k-normal surface in a triangulated 3-manifold is a generalization of both normal and (octagonal) almost normal surfaces. Using spines, complexity, and Turaev-Viro invariants of 3-manifolds, we prove the following…

The adjunction inequality is a key tool for bounding the genus of smoothly embedded surfaces in 4-manifolds. Using gauge-theoretic invariants, many versions of this inequality have been established for both closed surfaces and surfaces with…

We show existence of centrally symmetric maps on surfaces all of whose faces are quadrangles and pentagons for each orientable genus $g \geq 0$. We also show existence of centrally symmetric maps on surfaces all of whose faces are hexagons…

In this thesis, we use normal surface theory to understand certain properties of minimal triangulations of compact orientable 3-manifolds. We describe the collapsing process of normal 2-spheres and disks. Using some geometrical…

In this paper, we will compute the dimension of the space of spun and ordinary normal surfaces in an ideal triangulation of the interior of a compact 3-manifold with incompressible tori or Klein bottle components. Spun normal surfaces have…

A typical census of 3-manifolds contains all manifolds (under various constraints) that can be triangulated with at most n tetrahedra. Al- though censuses are useful resources for mathematicians, constructing them is difficult: the best…

Dimension 4 is the first dimension in which exotic smooth manifold pairs appear -- manifolds which are topologically the same but for which there is no smooth deformation of one into the other. Whilst smooth and triangulated 4-manifolds do…

Computational knot theory and 3-manifold topology have seen significant breakthroughs in recent years, despite the fact that many key algorithms have complexity bounds that are exponential or greater. In this setting, experimentation is…

We show that there are a finite number of possible pictures for a surface in a tetrahedron with local index $n$. Combined with previous results, this establishes that any topologically minimal surface can be transformed into one with a…

We show that in any triangulated 3-manifold, every index n topologically minimal surface can be transformed to a surface which has local indices (as computed in each tetrahedron) that sum to at most n. This generalizes classical theorems of…

Many questions about triangles and quadrilaterals with rational sides, diagonals and areas can be reduced to solving certain Diophantine equations. We look at a number of such questions including the question of approximating arbitrary…

The knowledge that data lies close to a particular submanifold of the ambient Euclidean space may be useful in a number of ways. For instance, one may want to automatically mark any point far away from the submanifold as an outlier or to…

Edge-to-edge tilings of the sphere by congruent quadrilaterals are completely classified in a series of three papers. This second one applies the powerful tool of trigonometric Diophantine equations to classify the case of…

In this work we provide an algorithm approximating the tangent bivector at a point of a smooth surface through inscribed triangles converging to the point, regardless their form or position with respect to the tangent plane. This result is…

We present a practical algorithm to test whether a 3-manifold given by a triangulation or an ideal triangulation contains a closed essential surface. This property has important theoretical and algorithmic consequences. As a testament to…