Related papers: Normal surfaces in topologically finite 3-manifold…
This} paper presents relations between least area and normal surfaces, embedded in either a Euclidean or hyperbolic $3$-manifold. A relaxed version of normal surfaces, termed quasi-normal, is introduced, and it is shown that under…
A major breakthrough in the theory of topological algorithms occurred in 1992 when Hyam Rubinstein introduced the idea of an almost normal surface. We explain how almost normal surfaces emerged naturally from the study of geodesics and…
We give a generalization of Thurston's Bounded Image Theorem for skinning maps, which applies to pared 3-manifolds with incompressible boundary that are not necessarily acylindrical. Along the way we study properties of divergent sequences…
We present an overview of the study of the Thurston norm, introduced by W. P. Thurston in the seminal paper "A norm for the homology of 3-manifolds" (written in 1976 and published in 1986). We first review fundamental properties of the…
In this paper, we use normal surface theory to study Dehn filling on a knot-manifold. First, it is shown that there is a finite computable set of slopes on the boundary of a knot-manifold that bound normal and almost normal surfaces in a…
We investigate slicings of combinatorial manifolds as properly embedded co-dimension 1 submanifolds. A focus is given to dimension 3 where slicings are normal surfaces. In the case of 2-neighborly 3-manifolds and quadrangulated slicings, a…
How good is a triangulation as an approximation of a smooth curved surface or manifold? We provide bounds on the {\em interpolation error}, the error in the position of the surface, and the {\em normal error}, the error in the normal…
This paper illustrates a computational approach to Culler-Morgan-Shalen theory using ideal triangulations, spun-normal surfaces and tropical geometry. Certain affine algebraic sets associated to the Whitehead link complement as well as…
We present a simple proof of the surface classification theorem using normal curves. This proof is analogous to Kneser's and Milnor's proof of the existence and uniqueness of the prime decomposition of 3-manifolds. In particular, we do not…
We study the normal map for plane projective curves, i.e., the map associating to every regular point of the curve the normal line at the point in the dual space. We first observe that the normal map is always birational and then we use…
In genus two and higher, the fundamental group of a closed surface acts naturally on the curve complex of the surface with one puncture. Combining ideas from previous work of Kent--Leininger--Schleimer and Mitra, we construct a universal…
The normal map given by Birkhoff orthogonality yields extensions of principal, Gaussian and mean curvatures to surfaces immersed in three-dimensional spaces whose geometry is given by an arbitrary norm and which are also called Minkowski…
In this paper, we consider a regular curve on an oriented surface in Euclidean 3-space with the Darboux frame $\{\mathsf{T},\mathsf{V},\mathsf{U}\}$ along the curve, where $\mathsf{T}$ is the unit tangent vector field of the curve,…
This paper considers asymptotically hyperbolic manifolds with a finite boundary intersecting the usual infinite boundary -- cornered asymptotically hyperbolic manifolds -- and proves a theorem of Cartan-Hadamard type near infinity for the…
We show that a strongly irreducible and boundary-strongly irreducible surface can be isotoped to be almost normal in a triangulated 3-manifold.
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,…
Every element in the first cohomology group of a 3--manifold is dual to embedded surfaces. The Thurston norm measures the minimal `complexity' of such surfaces. For instance the Thurston norm of a knot complement determines the genus of the…
About a decade ago Thurston proved that a vast collection of 3-manifolds carry metrics of constant negative curvature. These manifolds are thus elements of {\em hyperbolic geometry}, as natural as Euclid's regular polyhedra. For a closed…
Computational knot theory and 3-manifold topology have seen significant breakthroughs in recent years, despite the fact that many key algorithms have complexity bounds that are exponential or greater. In this setting, experimentation is…
Finite topology self translating surfaces to mean curvature flow of surfaces constitute a key element for the analysis of Type II singularities from a compact surface, since they arise in a limit after suitable blow-up scalings around the…