Related papers: On unstabilzed genus three critical Heegaard surfa…

We show that {\sc Heegaard Genus $\leq g$}, the problem of deciding whether a triangulated 3-manifold admits a Heegaard splitting of genus less than or equal to $g$, is NP-hard. The result follows from a quadratic time reduction of the…

We give two criteria for diagrams of Heegaard splittings of 3-manifolds. Weaker one of them guarantees that the splitting is strongly irreducible, and the stronger one guarantees in addition that the Goeritz group is finite. They are…

Suppose N is a compressible boundary component of a compact orientable irreducible 3-manifold M and Q is an orientable properly embedded essential surface in M in which each component is incident to N and no component is a disk. Let VN and…

A manifold which admits a reducible genus-$2$ Heegaard splitting is one of the $3$-sphere, $S^2 \times S^1$, lens spaces or their connected sums. For each of those splittings, the complex of Haken spheres is defined. When the manifold is…

Suppose $V\cup_S W$ is a weakly reducible Heegaard splitting of a closed 3-manifold which admits only $n$ pairs of disjoint compression disks on distinct sides and $g>2$. We show $V\cup_S W$ admits an untelescoping:…

For each integer k > 1, Johnson gave a 3-manifold with Heegaard splittings of genera 2k and 2k-1 such that any common stabilization of these two surfaces has genus at least 3k-1. We modify his argument to produce a 3-manifold with two…

We show that every p-fold strictly-cyclic branched covering of a b-bridge link in $S^3$ admits a p-symmetric Heegaard splitting - in the sense of Birman and Hilden - of genus $g=(b-1)(p-1)$. This gives a complete converse of one of the…

Heegaard splittings provide a natural representation of closed 3-manifolds by gluing two handlebodies along a common surface. These splittings can be equivalently given by two finite sets of meridians lying on the surface, which define a…

Let $M=W\cup_T V$ be an amalgamation of two compact 3-manifolds along a torus, where $W$ is the exterior of a knot in a homology sphere. Let $N$ be the manifold obtained by replacing $W$ with a solid torus such that the boundary of a…

Given a Heegaard surface in the $3$-sphere, we show that any non-separating weak reducing pair for the surface admits a reducing sphere that separates the two disks of the pair if and only if the genus of the surface is at most $3$.

We prove the existence of pure braids with arbitrarily many strands which are small, i.e. they contain no closed incompressible surface in the complement which is not boundary parallel. This implies the existence of irreducible non-Haken…

In this paper we show that for a given 3-manifold and a given Heegaard splitting there are finitely many preferred decomposing systems of $3g - 3$ disjoint essential disks. These are characterized by a combinatorial criterion which is a…

We give a proof of the so-called generalized Waldhausen conjecture, which says that an orientable irreducible atoroidal 3-manifold has only finitely many Heegaard splittings in each genus, up to isotopy. Jaco and Rubinstein have announced a…

Let M be a closed 3-manifold with a given Heegaard splitting. We show that after a single stabilization, some core of the stabilized splitting has arbitrarily high distance with respect to the splitting surface. This generalizes a result of…

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 Heegaard splitting of a closed, orientable three-manifold satisfies the disjoint curve property if the splitting surface contains an essential simple closed curve and each handlebody contains an essential disk disjoint from this curve…

We give a combinatorial proof of a theorem first proved by Souto which says the following. Let M_1 and M_2 be simple 3-manifolds with connected boundary of genus g>0. If M_1 and M_2 are glued via a complicated map, then every minimal…

We give a short proof of Scharlemann's Strong Haken Theorem for closed $3$-manifolds (and manifolds with spherical boundary). As an application, we also show that given a decomposing sphere $R$ for a $3$-manifold $M$ that splits off an $S^2…

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…

In this paper, by putting a separating incompressible surface in a 3-manifold into Morse position relative to the height function associated to a strongly irreducible Heegaard splitting, we show that an incompressible subsurface of the…