Related papers: Tori and Heegaard splittings

If R is a nonseparating simple closed curve on the boundary of a genus two handlebody H and H[R] has incompressible boundary, then there exists a unique arc omega in bdry(H), meeting R only in its endpoints, such that, omega is isotopic in…

This paper studies the question of whether minimal genus Heegaard splittings of exterior spaces of knots which are connected sums are weakly reducible or not. Furthermore it is shown that the Heegaard splittings of the knots used by…

In this thesis, we use normal surface theory to understand certain properties of minimal triangulations of compact orientable 3-manifolds. We describe the collapsing process of normal 2-spheres and disks. Using some geometrical…

We analyze how a family of essential annuli in a compact 3-manifold will induce, from a strongly irreducible generalized Heegaard splitting of the ambient manifold, generalized Heegaard splittings of the complementary components. There are…

Given a closed hyperbolic 3-manifold $M$, we construct a tower of covers with increasing Heegaard genus, and give an explicit lower bound on the Heegaard genus of such covers as a function of their degree. Using similar methods we prove…

Building on work of Kapouleas and Yang, we construct sequences of minimal surfaces embedded in the round 3-sphere which converge to the Clifford torus counted with multiplicity two and have second fundamental form blowing up at every point…

We study the effect of the mapping class group of a reducible 3-manifold $M$ on each incompressible surface that is invariant under a self-homeomorphism of $M$. As an application of this study we answer a question of F. Rodriguez Hertz, M.…

We construct a system of 33 essential simple closed curves that are pairwise non-homotopic and intersect at most once on the oriented, closed surface of genus 3. Moreover, we show that our construction is saturated, in the sense that it is…

Suppose C is a singular curve in CP^2 and it is topologically an embedded surface of genus g; such curves are called cuspidal. The singularities of C are cones on knots K_i. We apply Heegaard Floer theory to find new constraints on the sets…

Classically, an indecomposable class $R$ in the cone of effective curves on a K3 surface $X$ is representable by a smooth rational curve if and only if $R^2=-2$. We prove a higher-dimensional generalization conjectured by Hassett and…

Morse functions are important objects and tools in understanding topologies of manifolds since the 20th century. Their classification has been natural and difficult problems, and surprisingly, this is recently developing. Since the 2010's,…

We describe for each postive integer $k$ a 3-manifold with Heegaard surfaces of genus $2k$ and $2k-1$ such that any common stabilization of these two surfaces has genus at least $3k-1$. We also show that for every positive $n$, there is a…

Let $G$ be a finite group acting on a connected compact surface $\Sigma$, and $M$ be an integer homology 3-sphere. We show that if each element of $G$ is extendable over $M$ with respect to a fixed embedding $\Sigma\rightarrow M$, then $G$…

We show that if $M$ is a fibered, orientable 3-manifold, and if $\pi_1 M$ has 1-relator presentation, then the presentation is induced by a Heegaard splitting of $M$. A corollary is that, for these manifolds, the rank of $\pi_1 M$ is equal…

Those maps of a closed surface to the three-dimensional torus that are homotopic to embeddings are characterized. Particular attention is paid to the somewhat intricate case when the surface is nonorientable.

We show that after generic filling along a torus boundary component of a 3-manifold, no two closed, 2-sided, essential surfaces become isotopic, and no closed, 2-sided, essential surface becomes inessential. That is, the set of essential…

Lei and Wu have given a description of the second homotopy group of a closed orientable 3-manifold in terms of the kernels of the epimorphisms from the fundamental group of a Heegaard splitting surface onto the fundamental groups of the two…

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…

We prove that there is an algorithm which determines whether or not a given 2-polyhedron can be embedded into some integral homology 3-sphere. This is a corollary of the following main result. Let $M$ be a compact connected orientable…

Let M and M' be simple 3-manifolds, each with connected boundary of genus at least two. Suppose that M and M' are glued via a homeomorphism between their boundaries. Then we show that, provided the gluing homeomorphism is `sufficiently…