Related papers: Small Heegaard genus and SU(2)

We show that the knot group of any knot in any integer homology sphere admits a non-abelian representation into $SU(3)$ such that meridians are mapped to matrices whose eigenvalues are the three distinct third roots of unity. This answers…

We introduce a new technique for finding lower bounds on the Heegaard genus of a 3-manifold obtained by gluing a pair of 3-manifolds together along an incompressible torus or annulus. We deduce a number of inequalities, including one which…

Let $H$ be a strongly irreducible Heegaard surface in a closed oriented Riemannian $3$-manifold. We prove that $H$ is either isotopic to a minimal surface of index at most one or isotopic to the boundary of a tubular neighborhood about a…

We prove that the fundamental group of any integer homology 3-sphere different from the 3-sphere admits irreducible representations of its fundamental group in SL(2,C). For hyperbolic integer homology spheres this comes with the definition,…

We show that if two 3-manifolds with toroidal boundary are glued via a `sufficiently complicated' map then every Heegaard splitting of the resulting 3-manifold is weakly reducible. Additionally, if Z is a manifold obtained by gluing X and…

Let $M=W\cup_T V$ be an amalgamation of two compact 3-manifolds along a torus, where $W$ is the exterior of a knot in a homology sphere. Let $N$ be the manifold obtained by replacing $W$ with a solid torus such that the boundary of a…

Let $K$ be a tame knot embedded in $\mathbf{S}^3$. We address the problem of finding the minimal degree non-cyclic cover $p:X \rightarrow \mathbf{S}^3 \smallsetminus K$. When $K$ has non-trivial Alexander polynomial we construct finite…

Let $M_1$ and $M_2$ be orientable irreducible 3--manifolds with connected boundary and suppose $\partial M_1\cong\partial M_2$. Let $M$ be a closed 3--manifold obtained by gluing $M_1$ to $M_2$ along the boundary. We show that if the gluing…

The Heegaard genus g of an irreducible closed orientable 3-manifold puts a limit on the number and complexity of the pieces that arise in the Jaco-Shalen-Johannson decomposition of the manifold by its canonical tori. For example, if p of…

Non-isotopic Heegaard splittings of non-minimal genus were known previously only for very special 3-manifolds. We show in this paper that they are in fact a wide spread phenomenon in 3-manifold theory: We exhibit a large class of knots and…

We obtain a formula for the Heegaard Floer homology (hat theory) of the three-manifold $Y(K_1,K_2)$ obtained by splicing the complements of the knots $K_i\subset Y_i$, $i=1,2$, in terms of the knot Floer homology of $K_1$ and $K_2$. We also…

We classify $SU(2)$-cyclic and $SU(2)$-abelian 3-manifolds, for which every representation of the fundamental group into $SU(2)$ has cyclic or abelian image respectively, among geometric 3-manifolds which are not hyperbolic. As an…

We construct a counterexample to the Rank versus Genus Conjecture, i.e. a closed orientable hyperbolic 3-manifold with rank of its fundamental group smaller than its Heegaard genus. Moreover, we show that the discrepancy between rank and…

Fix a knot $K_0$ in $\mathbb{R}^3$ and consider a Lagrangian submanifold $L$ of $T^*\mathbb{R}^3$ that is isotopic to the conormal bundle of $K_0$ by a compactly supported Hamiltonian isotopy and intersects the zero section $\mathbb{R}^3$…

We study the existence of irreducible $SU(2)$-representations for cyclic branched covers of knots in $S^3$. Our main result establishes that if $K$ is a non-trivial prime knot and $d$ is an integer such that $d \geq 2$ and $\Sigma_d(K)$ is…

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…

The equivariant Heegaard genus of a 3-manifold $M$ with the action of a finite group $G$ of diffeomorphisms is the smallest genus of an equivariant Heegaard splitting for $M$. Although a Heegaard splitting of a reducible manifold is…

In 1968, Ringel and Youngs confirmed the last open case of the Heawood Conjecture by determining the genus of every complete graph $K_n$. In this paper, we investigate the minimum genus embeddings of the complete $3$-uniform hypergraphs…

We introduce a unified framework for counting representations of knot groups into $SU(2)$ and $SL(2, \mathbb{R})$. For a knot $K$ in the 3-sphere, Lin and others showed that a Casson-style count of $SU(2)$ representations with fixed…

Let (V,W;F) be a weakly reducible, unstabilized, genus three Heegaard splitting in an orientable, irreducible 3-manifold M. In this article, we prove that either the disk complex D(F) is contractible or F is critical. Hence, the topological…