Related papers: Computing closed essential surfaces in 3-manifolds

For a given cusped 3-manifold $M$ admitting an ideal triangulation, we describe a method to rigorously prove that either $M$ or a filling of $M$ admits a complete hyperbolic structure via verified computer calculations. Central to our…

Finding a totally geodesic surface, an embedded surface where the geodesics in the surface are also geodesics in the surrounding manifold, has been a problem of interest in the study of 3-manifolds. This has especially been of interest in…

Normal surface theory, a tool to represent surfaces in a triangulated 3-manifold combinatorially, is ubiquitous in computational 3-manifold theory. In this paper, we investigate a relaxed notion of normal surfaces where we remove the…

We count the number of isotopy classes of closed, connected, orientable, essential surfaces embedded in the exterior B of the knot K13n586.The main result is that the count of surfaces by genus is equal to the Euler totent function. This is…

Tollefson described a variant of normal surface theory for 3-manifolds, called Q-theory, where only the quadrilateral coordinates are used. Suppose $M$ is a triangulated, compact, irreducible, boundary-irreducible 3-manifold. In Q-theory,…

We show that there are algorithms to determine if a 3-manifold contains an essential lamination or a Reebless foliation.

We present some algorithms that provide useful topological information about curves in surfaces. One of the main algorithms computes the geometric intersection number of two properly embedded 1-manifolds $C_1$ and $C_2$ in a compact…

Closed essential surfaces in a three-manifold can be detected by ideal points of the character variety or by algebraic non-integral representations. We give examples of closed essential surfaces not detected in either of these ways. For…

In three-dimensional computational topology, the theory of normal surfaces is a tool of great theoretical and practical significance. Although this theory typically leads to exponential time algorithms, very little is known about how these…

The intersection matrix of a simplicial complex has entries equal to the rank of the intersection of its facets. In [1] the authors prove the intersection matrix is enough to determine a triangulation of a surface up to isomorphism. In this…

We investigate the complexity of finding an embedded non-orientable surface of Euler genus $g$ in a triangulated $3$-manifold. This problem occurs both as a natural question in low-dimensional topology, and as a first non-trivial instance…

We define an invariant, which we call surface-complexity, of closed 3-manifolds by means of Dehn surfaces. The surface-complexity of a manifold is a natural number measuring how much the manifold is complicated. We prove that it fulfils…

This survey focuses on the computational complexity of some of the fundamental decision problems in 3-manifold theory. The article discusses the wide variety of tools that are used to tackle these problems, including normal and almost…

The Heegaard genus is a fundamental invariant of 3-manifolds. However, computing the Heegaard genus of a triangulated 3-manifold is NP-hard, and while algorithms exist, little work has been done in making such an algorithm efficient and…

We investigate the computational complexity of some problems in three-dimensional topology and geometry. We show that the problem of determining a bound on the genus of a knot in a 3-manifold, is NP-complete. Using similar ideas, we show…

We describe some theoretical results on triangulations of surfaces and we develop a theory on roots, decompositions and genus-surfaces. We apply this theory to describe an algorithm to list all triangulations of closed surfaces with at most…

This extended abstract is about an effort to build a formal description of a triangulation algorithm starting with a naive description of the algorithm where triangles, edges, and triangulations are simply given as sets and the most complex…

Tightness is a generalisation of the notion of convexity: a space is tight if and only if it is "as convex as possible", given its topological constraints. For a simplicial complex, deciding tightness has a straightforward exponential time…

It is a major unsolved problem as to whether unknot recognition - that is, testing whether a given closed loop in R^3 can be untangled to form a plain circle - has a polynomial time algorithm. In practice, trivial knots (which can be…

We show that the problem of deciding whether a knot in a fixed closed orientable 3-dimensional manifold bounds a surface of genus at most $g$ is in co-NP. This answers a question of Agol, Hass, and Thurston in 2002. Previously, this was…