Related papers: An upper bound on distance degenerate handle addit…
This paper gives a geometric interpretation of bordered Heegaard Floer homology for manifolds with torus boundary. If $M$ is such a manifold, we show that the type D structure $\widehat{\mathit{CFD}}$ may be viewed as a set of immersed…
We give a short proof of Scharlemann's Strong Haken Theorem for closed $3$-manifolds (and manifolds with spherical boundary). As an application, we also show that given a decomposing sphere $R$ for a $3$-manifold $M$ that splits off an $S^2…
A smooth embedding of a closed $3$-manifold $M$ in $\mathbb{R}^4$ may generically be composed with projection to the fourth coordinate to determine a Morse function on $M$ and hence a Heegaard splitting $M=X\cup_\Sigma Y$. However, starting…
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 survey known (and unknown) results about the behavior of Heegaard genus of 3-manifolds constructed via various gluings. The constructions we consider are (1) gluing together two 3-manifolds with incompressible boundary, (2) gluing…
Let $F$ be a finite field with characteristic greater than two. Define a \emph{Besicovitch set} in $F^4$ to be a set $P \subseteq F^4$ containing a line in every direction. The \emph{Kakeya conjecture} asserts that $|P| \approx |F|^4$. A…
We give a necessary and sufficient condition for the fundamental group of the space of Heegaard splittings of an irreducible $3$-manifold to be finitely generated. The condition is exactly the conclusion of the thick isotopy lemma proved by…
Suppose $0 < \alpha \leq n$, $H: \Bbb R^n \to [0,1]$ is a Lebesgue measurable function, and $A_\alpha(H)$ is the infimum of all numbers $C$ for which the inequality $\int_B H(x) dx \leq C R^\alpha$ holds for all balls $B \subset \Bbb R^n$…
Let $f$ be an entire transcendental function of finite order and $\Delta$ be a forward invariant bounded Siegel disk for $f$ with rotation number in Herman's class $\mathcal{H}$. We show that if $f$ has two singular values with bounded…
Let $S$ be a connected orientable surface of finite topological type. We prove that there is an exhaustion of the curve complex $\mathcal{C}(S)$ by a sequence of finite rigid sets.
Let M be a compressionbody containing a graph T (with at least one edge) such that \boundary_+ M is parallel to the union of T and \boundary_- M. We extend methods of Hayashi and Shimokawa to classify bridge surfaces for T. The results of…
We give a new, algebraically computable formula for skein modules of closed 3-manifolds via Heegaard splittings. As an application, we prove that skein modules of closed 3-manifolds are finite-dimensional, resolving in the affirmative a…
Let $B$ be a bilinear form on pairs of points in the complex plane, of the form $B(p,q) = p^TMq$, for an invertible $2\times2$ complex matrix $M$. We prove that any finite set $S$ contained in an irreducible algebraic curve $C$ of degree…
Let $P$ be a set of $n$ points in the real plane contained in an algebraic curve $C$ of degree $d$. We prove that the number of distinct distances determined by $P$ is at least $c_d n^{4/3}$, unless $C$ contains a line or a circle. We also…
For a nondegenerate irreducible curve $C$ of degree $d$ in ${\Bbb P}^r$ over ${\Bbb F}_q$ with $r \geq 3$, we prove that the number $N_q(C)$ of ${\Bbb F}_q$-points of $C$ satisfies the inequality $N_q(C) \leq (d-1)q +1$, which is known as…
Let M be a 3-manifold admitting a strongly irreducible Heegaard surface S and f:M \to M an involution. We construct an invariant Heegaard surface for M of genus at most 8 g(S) - 7. As a consequence, given a (possibly branched) double cover…
We give a distance estimate for the metric on the disk complex and show that it is Gromov hyperbolic. As another application of our techniques, we find an algorithm which computes the Hempel distance of a Heegaard splitting, up to an error…
Let $M$ be a 3-manifold with torus boundary components $T_1$ and $T_2$. Let $\phi \colon T_1 \to T_2$ be a homeomorphism, $M_\phi$ the manifold obtained from $M$ by gluing $T_1$ to $T_2$ via the map $\phi$, and $T$ the image of $T_1$ in…
S. Kond\=o used periods of $K3$ surfaces to prove that the moduli space of genus three curves is birational to an arithmetic quotient of a complex 6-ball. In this paper we study Heegner divisors in the ball quotient, given by arithmetically…
We consider the Pekar functional on a ball in R^3. We prove uniqueness of minimizers, and a quadratic lower bound in terms of the distance to the minimizer. The latter follows from non-degeneracy of the Hessian at the minimum.