Related papers: The girth of a Heegaard splitting
We initiate the study of computing shortest non-separating simple closed curves with some given topological properties on non-orientable surfaces. While, for orientable surfaces, any two non-separating simple closed curves are related by a…
We study a popular algorithm for fitting polynomial curves to scattered data based on the least squares with gradient weights. We show that sometimes this algorithm admits a substantial reduction of complexity, and, furthermore, find…
This paper generalizes the definition of a Heegaard splitting to unify Scharlemann and Thomspon's concept of thin position for 3-manifolds, Gabai's thin position for knots, and Rubinstein's almost normal surface theory. This gives…
Casson and Gordon gave the rectangle condition for strong irreducibility of Heegaard splittings [1]. We give a parity condition for irreducibility of Heegaard splittings of irreducible manifolds. As an application, we give examples of…
In this paper we give a method to construct Heegaard splittings of oriented graph manifolds with orientable bases. A graph manifold is a closed $3$-manifold admitting only Seifert-fibered pieces in its Jaco-Shalen decomposition; for…
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 $(M,g)$ be a closed oriented Riemannian $3$-manifold and suppose that there is a strongly irreducible Heegaard splitting $H$. We prove that $H$ is either isotopic to a minimal surface of index at most one or isotopic to the stable…
Given a Heegaard splitting of a closed 3-manifold, the skein modules of the two handlebodies are modules over the skein algebra of their common boundary surface. The zeroth Hochschild homology of the skein algebra of a surface with…
A family of one-vertex triangulations of 3-manifolds, layered-triangulations, is defined. Layered-triangulations are first described for handlebodies and then extended to all 3-manifolds via Heegaard splittings. A complete and detailed…
It is known that there are surface bundles of arbitrarily high genus which have genus two Heegaard splittings. The simplest examples are Seifert fibered spaces with the sphere as a base space, three exceptional fibers and which allow…
We show that the standard minimal genus Heegaard splitting of (closed orientable surface)\times S^1 is a critical Heegaard splitting.
We study complexities of 3-manifolds defined from triangulations, Heegaard splittings, and surgery presentations. We show that these complexities are related by linear inequalities, by presenting explicit geometric constructions. We also…
If $X$ is a compact set, a {\it topological contraction} is a self-embedding $f$ such that the intersection of the successive images $f^k(X)$, $k>0$, consists of one point. In dimension 3, we prove that there are smooth topological…
The writhe of a space curve fragment is considered for various boundary conditions. An expression for the writhe as a function of arclength for an arbitrary space curve is obtained. The formula is built on the base of closing the tangent…
Braids can be represented geometrically as curve diagrams. The geometric complexity of a braid is the minimal complexity of a curve diagram representing it. We introduce and study the corresponding notion of geometric generating function.…
The twisted face-pairing construction of our earlier papers gives an efficient way of generating, mechanically and with little effort, myriads of relatively simple face-pairing descriptions of interesting closed 3-manifolds. The…
We prove that for generic metrics on a 3-sphere, the minimal surface obtained from the min-max procedure of Simon-Smith has index 1. We prove an analogous result for minimal surfaces arising from strongly irreducible Heegaard sweepouts in…
We prove that for any distance at least 3 Heegaard splitting and a boundary component $F$, there is a diameter finite ball in the curve complex $\mathcal {C}(F)$ so that it contains all distance degenerate curves or slopes in $F$.
We survey some recent geometric methods for studying Heegaard splittings of 3-manifolds
It has been shown elsewhere that a strongly irreducible Heegaard splitting surface Q of a compact orientable 3-manifold M can, under reasonable side conditions, intersect a ball or a solid torus in M in only a few possible ways. Here we…