Related papers: Heegaard splittings of exteriors of, two bridge kn…

We show that the distance of a link $K$ with respect to a bridge surface of any genus determines a lower bound on the genus of essential surfaces and Heegaard surfaces in the manifolds that result from non-trivial Dehn surgeries on the…

Let $K,K'$ be two-bridge knots of genus $n,k$ respectively. We show the necessary and sufficient condition of $n$ in terms of $k$ that there exists an epimorphism from the knot group of $K$ onto that of $K'$.

We extend the notion of thin multiple Heegaard splittings of a link in a 3-manifold to take into consideration not only compressing disks but also cut-disks for the Heegaard surfaces. We prove that if H is a c-strongly compressible bridge…

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…

A theorem of Jorgensen and Thurston implies that the volume of a hyperbolic 3-manifold is bounded below by a linear function of its Heegaard genus. Heegaard surfaces and bridge surfaces often exhibit similar topological behavior; thus it is…

We prove that if a fibered knot $K$ with genus greater than one in a three-manifold $M$ has a sufficiently complicated monodromy, then $K$ induces a minimal genus Heegaard splitting $P$ that is unique up to isotopy, and small genus Heegaard…

We use technology from sutured manifold theory and the theory of Heegaard splittings to relate genus reducing crossing changes on knots in S^3 to twists on surfaces arising in circular Heegaard splittings for knot complements. In a separate…

A marked strongly invertible knot is a triple $(K,h,\delta)$ of a knot $K$ in $S^3$, a strong inversion $h$ of $K$, and a subarc $\delta \subset \operatorname{Fix}(h)\cong S^1$ bounded by $\operatorname{Fix}(h)\cap K\cong S^0$. An invariant…

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…

We prove a simple necessary and sufficient condition for a two-bridge knot K(p,q) to be quasipositive, based on the continued fraction expansion of p/q. As an application, coupled with some classification results in contact and symplectic…

We determine the set of all genus g bridge numbers of many iterated torus knots, listing these numbers in a sequence called the bridge spectrum. In addition, we prove a structural lemma about the decomposition of a strongly irreducible…

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…

Suppose $K$ is a knot in a closed 3-manifold $M$ such that $\bar{M-N(K)}$ is irreducible. We show that for any positive integer $b$ there exists a triangulation of $\bar{M-N(K)}$ such that any weakly incompressible bridge surface for $K$ of…

In a 3-manifold M, let K be a knot and R be an annulus which meets K transversely. We define the notion of the pair (R,K) being caught by a surface Q in the exterior of the link given by K and the boundary curves of R. For a caught pair…

Suppose that a three-manifold M contains infinitely many distinct strongly irreducible Heegaard splittings H + nK, obtained by Haken summing the surface H with n copies of the surface K. We show that K is incompressible. All known examples,…

The goal of this paper is to offer a comprehensive exposition of the current knowledge about Heegaard splittings of exteriors of knots in the 3-sphere. The exposition is done with a historical perspective as to how ideas developed and by…

In this paper, we characterize closed incompressible surfaces of genus two in the complements of 3-bridge knots and links. This characterization includes that of essential 2-string tangle decompositions for 3-bridge knots and links.

Let M be a totally orientable graph manifold with characteristic submanifold T and let M = V cup_S W be a Heegaard splitting. We prove that S is standard. In particular, S is the amalgamation of strongly irreducible Heegaard splittings. The…

Given a band sum of a split two-component link along a nontrivial band, we obtain a family of knots indexed by the integers by adding any number of full twists to the band. We show that the knots in this family have the same Heegaard knot…

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…