Related papers: An Infinite Family of Links with Critical Bridge S…

We show that for every integer $b\geq 3$, there exists a link in a $b$-bridge position with respect to a critical bridge sphere. In fact, for each $b$, we construct an infinite family of links which we call square whose bridge spheres are…

In this paper we introduce "critical surfaces", which are described via a 1-complex whose definition is reminiscent of the curve complex. Our main result is that if the minimal genus common stabilization of a pair of strongly irreducible…

We show that an $(n+1)$-bridge sphere for the unknot is a topologically minimal surface of index at most $n$.

The disk complex of a surface in a 3-manifold is used to define its {\it topological index}. Surfaces with well-defined topological index are shown to generalize well-known classes, such as incompressible, strongly irreducible, and critical…

A bridge sphere is said to be keen weakly reducible if it admits a unique pair of disjoint compressing disks on opposite sides. In particular, such a bridge sphere is weakly reducible, not perturbed, and not topologically minimal in the…

We show that except for $n = 2$ if a bridge surface for a knot is an index $n$ topologically minimal surface, then after a perturbation it is still topologically minimal with index at most $n+1$.

This paper contains the motivation for the study of critical surfaces. In previous work the only justification given for the definition of this new class of surfaces is the strength of the results. However, when viewed as the topological…

Among the classical variants of the Pr\"ufer surface, some are homotopy equivalent to a CW-complex (namely, a point or a wedge of a continuum of circles) and some are not. The obstruction comes from the existence of uncountably many…

Every link is shown to be presentable as a boundary of an unknotted flat banded surface. A (flat) banded link is defined as a boundary of an unknotted (flat) banded surface. A link's (flat) band index is defined as the minimum number of…

Suppose a link K in a 3-manifold M is in bridge position with respect to two different bridge surfaces P and Q, both of which are c-weakly incompressible in the complement of K. Then either P and Q can be properly isotoped to intersect in a…

For closed odd-dimensional manifolds with sectional curvature less or equal than -1, we define the minimal surface entropy that counts the number of surface subgroups. It attains the minimum if and only if the metric is hyperbolic.…

Critical surfaces are defined by Bachman as topological index 2 surfaces, generalizing incompressible surfaces and strongly irreducible surfaces. In this paper we give a condition to obtain critical Heegaard surfaces by amalgamation. As a…

This paper focuses on the problem of topological equivalence of functions with isolated critical points on the boundary of a compact surface $M$ which are also isolated critical points of their restrictions to the boundary. This class of…

We construct embedded closed minimal surfaces in the round three-sphere, resembling two parallel copies of the Clifford torus, joined by m^2 small catenoidal bridges symmetrically arranged along a square lattice of points on the torus.

Meier and Zupan showed that every surface in the four-sphere admits a bridge trisection and can therefore be represented by three simple tangles. This raises the possibility of applying methods from link homology to knotted surfaces. We use…

We prove that in the complement of a highly twisted link, all closed, essential, meridionally incompressible surfaces must have high genus. The genus bound is proportional to the number of crossings per twist region. A similar result holds…

We construct, for $m\geq 6$ and $2n\leq m$, closed manifolds $M^{m}$ with finite nonzero $\varphi(M^{m},S^{n}$), where $\varphi(M,N)$ denotes the minimum number of critical points of a smooth map $M\to N$. We also give some explicit…

We compute the minimum number of critical points of a small codimension smooth map between two manifolds. We give as well some partial results for the case of higher codimension when the manifolds are spheres.

For any pair of integers $m$ and $n$ such that $3<m<n$, we provide an infinite family of links, where each link in the family has a locally minimal $n$-bridge position and a globally minimal $m$-bridge position. We accomplish this by…

We consider manifolds $M^{2n}$ which admit smooth maps into a connected sum of $S^1\times S^n$ with only finitely many critical points, for $n\in\{2,4,8\}$, and compute the minimal number of critical points.