Related papers: A note on reducing spheres for the genus-4 Heegaar…

Given a Heegaard surface in the $3$-sphere, we show that any non-separating weak reducing pair for the surface admits a reducing sphere that separates the two disks of the pair if and only if the genus of the surface is at most $3$.

For a boundary-reducible $3$-manifold $M$ with $\partial M$ a genus $g$ surface, we show that if $M$ admits a genus $g+1$ Heegaard surface $S$, then the disk complex of $S$ is simply connected. Also we consider the connectedness of the…

The Powell Conjecture states that the Goeritz group of the Heegaard splitting of the $3$-sphere is finitely generated; furthermore, four specific elements suffice to generate the group. Zupan demonstrated that the conjecture holds if and…

The Goeritz group of the standard genus-g Heegaard splitting of the three sphere, $G_g$, acts on the space of isotopy classes of reducing spheres for this Heegaard splitting. Scharlemann MR2199366 (2007c:57020) uses this action to prove…

Haken showed that the Heegaard splittings of reducible 3-manifolds are reducible, that is, a reducing 2-sphere can be found which intersects the Heegaard surface in a single simple closed curve. When the genus of the "interesting" surface…

We show that the disk complex of a genus $g>1$ Heegaard surface for the 3-sphere is homotopy equivalent to a wedge of $(2g-2)$-dimensional spheres. This implies that genus $g>1$ Heegaard surfaces for the 3-sphere are topologically minimal…

A manifold which admits a reducible genus-$2$ Heegaard splitting is one of the $3$-sphere, $S^2 \times S^1$, lens spaces or their connected sums. For each of those splittings, the complex of Haken spheres is defined. When the manifold is…

In this paper, by putting a separating incompressible surface in a 3-manifold into Morse position relative to the height function associated to a strongly irreducible Heegaard splitting, we show that an incompressible subsurface of the…

We prove that the mapping class groups of the genus 3 Heegaard splittings of the connected sum of two lens spaces are finitely generated, and the corresponding reducing sphere complexes are all connected.

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…

In this paper we study isotopy classes of closed connected orientable surfaces in the standard $3$-sphere. Such a surface splits the $3$-sphere into two compact connected submanifolds, and by using their Heegaard splittings, we obtain a…

Given a genus two Heegaard splitting for a non-prime 3-manifold, we define a special subcomplex of the disk complex for one of the handlebodies of the splitting, and then show that it is contractible. As applications, first we show that the…

We show that sub-surfaces of a Heegaard surface for which the relative Hempel distance of the splitting is sufficiently high have to appear in any Heegaard surface of genus bounded by half that distance.

We consider a Heegaard splitting M=H_1 \cup_S H_2 of a 3-manifold M having an essential disk D in H_1 and an essential surface F in H_2 with |D \cap F|=1. (We require that boundary of F is in S when H_2 is a compressionbody with non-empty…

An updated proof of a 1933 theorem of Goeritz, exhibiting a finite set of generators for the group of automorphisms of the 3-sphere that preserve a genus two Heegaard splitting. The group is analyzed via its action on a certain connected…

Suppose T is a Heegaard splitting surface for a compact orientable 3-manifold M, and S is a reducing sphere for M. In 1968 Haken showed that there is then also a reducing sphere S* for the Heegaard splitting. That is, S* is a reducing…

Suppose N is a compressible boundary component of a compact orientable irreducible 3-manifold M and Q is an orientable properly embedded essential surface in M in which each component is incident to N and no component is a disk. Let VN and…

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 prove that the separated curve complex of a closed orientable surface of genus g is (g-3)-connected. We also obtain a connectivity property for a separated curve complex of the open surface that is obtained by removing a finite set from…

This note is devoted to a trick which yields almost trivial proofs that certain complexes associated to topological surfaces are connected or simply connected. Applications include new proofs that the complexes of curves, separating curves,…