Related papers: Thurston norm via Fox calculus
The Thurston norm of a 3-manifold measures the complexity of surfaces representing two-dimensional homology classes. We study the possible unit balls of Thurston norms of 3-manifolds $M$ with $b_1(M) = 2$, and whose fundamental groups admit…
We present an overview of the study of the Thurston norm, introduced by W. P. Thurston in the seminal paper "A norm for the homology of 3-manifolds" (written in 1976 and published in 1986). We first review fundamental properties of the…
For a 3-manifold M, McMullen derived from the Alexander polynomial of M a norm on H^1(M, R) called the Alexander norm. He showed that the Thurston norm on H^1(M, R), which measures the complexity of a dual surface, is an upper bound for the…
We show that the Thurston norm of any irreducible 3-manifold can be detected using twisted Reidemeister torsions corresponding to integral representations and also corresponding to representations over finite fields. In particular our…
This is a first in a series of papers, devoted to the relation betwwen three-manifolds and number fields. The present paper studies first homology of finite coverings of a three-manifold with primary interest in the Thurston $b_1$…
Given a triangulation of a closed, oriented, irreducible, atoroidal 3-manifold every oriented, incompressible surface may be isotoped into normal position relative to the triangulation. Such a normal oriented surface is then encoded by…
Every element in the first cohomology group of a 3--manifold is dual to embedded surfaces. The Thurston norm measures the minimal `complexity' of such surfaces. For instance the Thurston norm of a knot complement determines the genus of the…
We use Fox calculus to assign a marked polytope to a `nice' group presentation with two generators and one relator. Relating the marked vertices to Novikov-Sikorav homology we show that they determine the Bieri-Neumann-Strebel invariant of…
In 1976, Thurston proved that taut foliations on closed hyperbolic 3-manifolds have Euler class of norm at most one, and conjectured that conversely, any integral second cohomology class with norm equal to one is the Euler class of a taut…
In 1986, W. Thurston introduced a (possibly degenerate) norm on the first cohomology group of a 3-manifold. Inspired by this definition, Turaev introduced in 2002 a analogous norm on the first cohomology group of a finite 2-complex. We show…
Thurston norms are invariants of 3-manifolds defined on their second homology vector spaces, and understanding the shape of their dual unit ball is a (widely) open problem. W. Thurston showed that every symmetric polygon in Z^2, whose…
The Thurston norm is a seminorm on the second real homology group of a compact orientable 3-manifold. The unit ball of this norm is a convex polyhedron, whose shape's data (e.g. number of vertices, regularity) measures the complexity of the…
A new lower bound on the complexity of a 3-manifold is given using the Z2-Thurston norm. This bound is shown to be sharp, and the minimal triangulations realising it are characterised using normal surfaces consisting entirely of…
In this sequel to earlier papers by three of the authors, we obtain a new bound on the complexity of a closed 3--manifold, as well as a characterisation of manifolds realising our complexity bounds. As an application, we obtain the first…
In analogy with the Thurston norm, we define for an orientable 3-manifold $M$ a numerical function on $H_2(M;Q/Z)$. This function measures the minimal complexity of folded surfaces representing a given homology class. A similar function is…
We investigate Friedl-L\"uck's universal $L^2$-torsion for descending HNN extensions of finitely generated free groups, and so in particular for $F_n$-by-$\mathbb{Z}$ groups. This invariant induces a semi-norm on the first cohomology of the…
For closed oriented manifolds, we establish oriented homotopy invariance of higher signatures that come from the fundamental group of a large class of orientable 3-manifolds, including the ``piecewise geometric'' ones in the sense of…
We establish a new homological lower bound for the Thurston norm on 1-cohomology of 3-manifolds. This generalizes previous results of C. McMullen, S. Harvey, and the author. We also establish an analogous lower bound for 1-cohomology of…
The aim of this paper is to discuss some applications of the relation between Seiberg-Witten theory and two natural norms defined on the first cohomology group of a closed 3-manifold N - the Alexander and Thurston norms. We start by giving…
Classical work of Thurston and Gabai shows that finitely many taut sutured manifold hierarchies determine the Thurston norm of a compact oriented irreducible $3$-manifold with toroidal boundary. We give an explicit procedure to extract this…