Related papers: Double pants decompositions of 2-surfaces

A correspondence, by way of Heegaard splittings, between closed oriented 3-manifolds and pairs of surjections from a surface group to a free group has been studied by Stallings, Jaco, and Hempel. This correspondence, by way of trisections,…

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…

Let $M$ be a 3-manifold with torus boundary components $T_1$ and $T_2$. Let $\phi \colon T_1 \to T_2$ be a homeomorphism, $M_\phi$ the manifold obtained from $M$ by gluing $T_1$ to $T_2$ via the map $\phi$, and $T$ the image of $T_1$ in…

Let $\Sigma_{g,n}$ denote the compact orientable surface with genus $g\geq 2$ and boundary disjoint union of $n$ circles. By using a particular pants-decomposition of $\Sigma_{g,n},$ we obtain a formula that computes the Reidemeister…

Lei and Wu have given a description of the second homotopy group of a closed orientable 3-manifold in terms of the kernels of the epimorphisms from the fundamental group of a Heegaard splitting surface onto the fundamental groups of the two…

Let $Y_1$ be a closed, oriented 3-manifold and $\Sigma$ denote a non-separating closed, orientable surface in $Y_1$ which consists of two connected components of the same genus. By cutting $Y_1$ along $\Sigma$ and re-gluing it using an…

Given a self-diffeomorphism h of a closed, orientable surface S and an embedding f of S into a three-manifold M, we construct a mutant manifold N by cutting M along f(S) and regluing by h. We will consider whether there are any gluings such…

We classify isotopy classes of automorphisms (self-homeomorphisms) of 3-manifolds satisfying the Thurston Geometrization Conjecture. The classification is similar to the classification of automorphisms of surfaces developed by Nielsen and…

We introduce a coarse perspective on relations of the $SU(2)$-Witten-Reshetikhin-Turaev TQFT, the Weil-Petersson geometry of the Teichm\"uller space, and volumes of hyperbolic 3-manifolds. Using data from the asymptotic expansions of the…

Let $M$ be an orientable, irreducible $3$-manifold admitting a weakly reducible genus three Heegaard splitting as a minimal genus Heegaard splitting. In this article, we prove that if $[f]$, $[g]\in Mod(M)$ give the same correspondence…

The mapping class group of a Heegaard splitting is the group of connected components in the set of automorphisms of the ambient manifold that map the Heegaard surface onto itself. For the genus three Heegaard splitting of the 3-torus, we…

We define integral measures of complexity for Heegaard splittings based on the graph dual to the curve complex and on the pants complex defined by Hatcher and Thurston. As the Heegaard splitting is stabilized, the sequence of complexities…

Motivated by a result of L.P. Roberts on rational blow-downs in Heegaard-Floer homology, we study such operations along 3-manifolds that arise as branched double covers of $S^{3}$ along several non-alternating, slice knots.

In this paper we study isotopy classes of closed connected orientable surfaces in the standard $3$-sphere. Such a surface splits the $3$-sphere into two compact connected submanifolds, and by using their Heegaard splittings, we obtain a…

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…

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…

Here we study the deformations of associative submanifolds inside a G_2 manifold M^7 with a calibration 3-form \phi. A choice of 2-plane field \Lambda on M (which always exits) splits the tangent bundle of M as a direct sum of a…

A Heegaard splitting of a $3$-manifold is flippable if there is an isotopy that interchanges the two sides of the Heegaard splitting. We explore which Heegaard splittings of Seifert fibered spaces are flippable.

Let F a closed connected orientable surface bounding a genus g handlebody H. In this paper we find a finite set of generators for the subgroup E(2,g) of the pure mapping class group of the twice punctured torus PMCG(2,g), consisting of the…

We define a Heegaard-Scharlemann-Thompson (HST) splitting of a 3-manifold M to be a sequence of pairwise-disjoint, embedded surfaces, {F_i}, such that for each odd value of i, F_i is a Heegaard splitting of the submanifold of M cobounded by…