Related papers: Open book decompositions versus prime factorizatio…
We determine parts of the contact homology of certain contact 3-manifolds in the framework of open book decompositions, due to Giroux. We study two cases: when the monodromy map of the compatible open book is periodic and when it is…
Branch points of a real 2-surface S in a 4-manifold M generalize the branch points of complex curves in complex surfaces: for example, they can occur as singularities of minimal surfaces. We investigate such a branch point p when S is…
Let $(M,\omega)$ be a geometrically bounded symplectic manifold, $N\subseteq M$ a closed, regular (i.e. "fibering") coisotropic submanifold, and $\phi:M\to M$ a Hamiltonian diffeomorphism. The main result of this article is that the number…
We calculate a certain homological obstruction introduced by De Concini, Procesi and Salvetti in their study of the Schwartz genus of the fibration from the space of ordered configuration of points in the plane to the space of the unordered…
Using an obstruction based on Donaldson's theorem on the intersection forms of definite 4-manifolds, we determine which connected sums of lens spaces smoothly embed in S^4. We also find constraints on the Seifert invariants of Seifert…
There are two objects naturally associated with a braid $\beta\in B_n$ of pseudo-Anosov type: a (relative) pseudo-Anosov homeomorphism $\varphi_\beta\colon S^2\to S^2$; and the finite volume complete hyperbolic structure on the 3-manifold…
Given an special type of triangulation $T$ for an oriented closed 3-manifold $M^3$ we produce a framed link in $S^3$ which induces the same $M^3$ by an algorithm of complexity $O(n^2)$ where $n$ is the number of tetrahedra in $T$ . The…
We study Betti numbers of sequences of Riemannian manifolds which Benjamini-Schramm converge to their universal covers. Using the Price inequalities we developed elsewhere, we derive two distinct convergence results. First, under a negative…
We introduce the notion of a nested open book, a submanifold equipped with an open book structure compatible with an ambient open book, and describe in detail the special case of a push-off of the binding of an open book. This enables us to…
We introduce a notion of "quasi-right-veering" for closed braids, which plays an analogous role to "right-veering" for open books. We show that a transverse link $K$ in a contact 3-manifold $(M,\xi)$ is non-loose if and only if every braid…
We classify those compact 3-manifolds with incompressible toral boundary whose fundamental groups are residually free. For example, if such a manifold $M$ is prime and orientable and the fundamental group of $M$ is non-trivial then $M \cong…
It is proved by Sakuma and Brooks that any closed orientable $3$-manifold with a Heegaard splitting of genus $g$ admits a $2$-fold branched cover that is a hyperbolic $3$-manifold and a genus $g$ surface bundle over the circle. This paper…
We study an explicit construction of planar open books with four binding components on any three-manifold which is given by integral surgery on three component pure braid closures. This construction is general, indeed any planar open book…
This is a review article on the Bennequin-Birman-Menasco machinery for studying embedded incompressible surfaces in 3-space via their `braid foliations'. Two cases are investigated: case (1) The surface has non-empty boundary; the boundary…
We have introduced the weight of a group which has a presentation with number of relations is at most the number of generators. We have shown that the number of facets of any contracted pseudotriangulation of a connected closed 3-manifold…
By generalizing the argument of Pavelescu \cite{Pav12}, we show that every transverse link $ K $ in a compact contact 3-manifold can be transversely isotoped to a braid with respect to a rational open book decomposition.
The triangulation complexity of a closed orientable 3-manifold is the minimal number of tetrahedra in any triangulation of the manifold. The main theorem of the paper gives upper and lower bounds on the triangulation complexity of any…
We introduce and develop a language of semigroups over the braid groups for a study of braid monodromy factorizations (bmf's) of plane algebraic curves and other related objects. As an application we give a new proof of Orevkov's theorem on…
We complete the classification (started by Bray and the second author) of all closed 3-manifolds with Yamabe invariant greater than that of $\RP^3$, by showing that such manifolds are either $S^3$ or finite connected sums $# m(S^2 \times…
The cut number of a manifold M, c(M), is the largest number of disjoint two-sided hypersurfaces in M which do not separate M. Equivalently, it is the largest rank of a free group being an epimorphic image of pi_1(M). We investigate the…