Related papers: On moves between branched coverings of S^3: The ca…
We prove that any closed simply-connected smooth 4-manifold is 16-fold branched covered by a product of an orientable surface with the 2-torus, where the construction is natural with respect to spin structures. In particular this solves…
Examples suggest that there is a correspondence between L-spaces and 3-manifolds whose fundamental groups cannot be left-ordered. In this paper we establish the equivalence of these conditions for several large classes of such manifolds. In…
We develop a calculus of surgery data, called bridged links, which involves besides links also pairs of balls that describe one-handle attachements. As opposed to the usual link calculi of Kirby and others this description uses only…
We describe an algorithm that takes as input an open book decomposition of a closed oriented 4-manifold and outputs an explicit trisection diagram of that 4-manifold. Moreover, a slight variation of this algorithm also works for open books…
We study trisections of 4-manifolds obtained by spinning and twist-spinning 3-manifolds, and we show that, given a (suitable) Heegaard diagram for the 3-manifold, one can perform simple local modifications to obtain a trisection diagram for…
We present two proofs that all closed, orientable 3-manifolds are parallelisable. Both are based on the Lickorish-Wallace surgery presentation; one proof uses a refinement due to Kaplan and some basic contact geometry. This complements a…
Two triples of triangles having pairwise disjoint outlines in 3-space are called combinatorially isotopic if one triple can be obtained from the other by a continuous motion during which the outlines of the triangles remain pairwise…
Recently, Mullins calculated the Casson-Walker invariant of the 2-fold cyclic branched cover of an oriented link in S^3 in terms of its Jones polynomial and its signature, under the assumption that the 2-fold branched cover is a rational…
A pants-block decomposition of a 3-manifold is similar to a triangulation of a 3-manifold in many aspects. In this paper we show that any two pants-block decompositions of a 3-manifold are related by a finite sequence of moves which are…
This paper is the second part of our work on 4-dimensional 2-handlebodies. In the first part (arXiv:math.GT/0407032) it is shown that up to certain set of local moves, connected simple coverings of B^4 branched over ribbon surfaces,…
It is not known whether there exists a computable function bounding the number of Pachner moves needed to connect any two triangulation of a compact 3-manifold. In this paper we find an explicit bound of this kind for all Haken 3-manifolds…
It was recently shown that there exists an explicit bound for the number of Pachner moves needed to connect any two triangulation of any Haken 3-manifold which contains no fibred sub-manifolds as strongly simple pieces of its…
We investigate the combinatorial analogues, in the context of normal surfaces, of taut and transversely measured (codimension 1) foliations of 3-manifolds. We establish that the existence of certain combinatorial structures, a priori weaker…
We establish a calculus for branched spines of 3-manifolds by means of branched Matveev-Piergallini moves and branched bubble-moves. We briefly indicate some of its possible applications in the study and definition of State-Sum Quantum…
A geometric triangulation of a Riemannian manifold is a triangulation where the interior of each simplex is totally geodesic. Bistellar moves are local changes to the triangulation which are higher dimensional versions of the flip operation…
Gabai showed that the Whitehead manifold is the union of two submanifolds each of which is homeomorphic to $\mathbb R^3$ and whose intersection is again homeomorphic to $\mathbb R^3$. Using a family of generalizations of the Whitehead Link,…
Matveev and Piergallini independently showed that, with a small number of known exceptions, any triangulation of a three-manifold can be transformed into any other triangulation of the same three-manifold with the same number of vertices,…
In this article, we propose a new approach for describing and understanding knots and links in a 3-manifold through the use of an embedded non-orientable surface. Specifically, we define a plat-like representation based on this…
We study the possibility of realizing exotic smooth structures on punctured simply connected $4$-manifolds as leaves of a codimension one foliation on a compact manifold. In particular, we show the existence of uncountably many smooth open…
We construct invariants of four-dimensional piecewise-linear manifolds, represented as simplicial complexes, with respect to rebuildings that transform a cluster of three 4-simplices having a common two-dimensional face in a different…