Related papers: On the connectedness of subcomplexes of a disk com…

Let $p: S\to S_g$ be a finite covering of an orientable closed surface of genus $g$. We prove that, for $g\geq 3$, the rational homology group $H_1(S;{\mathbb Q})$ is generated by cycles supported on simple closed curves $\gamma\subset S$…

It is shown that if the exterior of a link L in the three sphere admits a genus 2 Heegaard splitting, then L has Generalized Property R.

We give another proof of a theorem of Scharlemann and Tomova and of a theorem of Hartshorn. The two theorems together say the following. Let M be a compact orientable irreducible 3--manifold and P a Heegaard surface of M. Suppose Q is…

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…

Given a closed four-manifold $X$ with an indefinite intersection form, we consider smoothly embedded surfaces in $X \setminus $int$(B^4)$, with boundary a knot $K \subset S^3$. We give several methods to bound the genus of such surfaces in…

In this paper, we show that, for any integers $n\geq 2$ and $g\geq 2$, there exist genus-$g$ Heegaard splittings of compact 3-manifolds with distance exactly $n$.

We consider irreducible 3-manifolds M that arise as knot complements in closed 3-manifolds and that contain at most two connected strict essential surfaces. The results in the paper relate the boundary slopes of the two surfaces to their…

We consider orientation-preserving actions of finite groups $G$ on pairs $(S^3, \Sigma)$, where $\Sigma$ denotes a compact connected surface embedded in $S^3$. In a previous paper, we considered the case of closed, necessarily orientable…

In this paper we state and prove a higher index theorem for an odd-dimensional connected spin riemannian manifold $(M,g)$ which is partitioned by an oriented closed hypersurface $N$. This index theorem generalizes a theorem due to N. Higson…

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…

We give an algorithmic proof of the theorem that a closed orientable irreducible and atoroidal 3-manifold has only finitely many Heegaard splittings in each genus, up to isotopy. The proof gives an algorithm to determine the Heegaard genus…

We introduce a new technique for finding lower bounds on the Heegaard genus of a 3-manifold obtained by gluing a pair of 3-manifolds together along an incompressible torus or annulus. We deduce a number of inequalities, including one which…

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…

Let $X$ be a closed indefinite $4$-manifold with $b_+(X) = 3 \; ({\rm mod} \; 4)$ and with non-vanishing mod $2$ Seiberg--Witten invariants. We prove a new lower bound on the genus of a properly embedded surface in $X \setminus B^4$…

This paper presents some finiteness results for the number of boundary slopes of immersed essential surfaces of given genus g in a compact 3-manifold with torus boundary. In the case of hyperbolic 3-manifolds we obtain uniform quadratic…

We classify minimal complex surfaces of general type with $p_g=q=3$. More precisely, we show that such a surface is either the symmetric product of a curve of genus 3 or a free $\Z_2-$quotient of the product of a curve of genus 2 and a…

We investigate the topological structures of Galois covers of surfaces of minimal degree (i.e., degree n) in n+1 dimensional complex projective space. We prove that for n is greater than or equal to 5, the Galois covers of any surfaces of…

We prove that if a contact 3-manifold admits an open book decomposition of genus 0, a certain intersection pattern cannot appear in the homology of any of its minimal symplectic fillings, and moreover, fillings cannot contain symplectic…

Suppose S is a compact surface with boundary, and let g be a diffeomorphism of S which fixes the boundary pointwise. We denote by (M_{S,g},\xi_{S,g})$ the contact 3-manifold compatible with the open book (S,g). In this article, we construct…

This article is concerned with locally flatly immersed surfaces in simply-connected $4$-manifolds where the complement of the surface has fundamental group $\mathbb{Z}$. Once the genus and number of double points are fixed, we classify such…