Related papers: Sweepouts of amalgamated 3-manifolds

We give a combinatorial proof of a theorem first proved by Souto which says the following. Let M_1 and M_2 be simple 3-manifolds with connected boundary of genus g>0. If M_1 and M_2 are glued via a complicated map, then every minimal…

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…

Let M and M' be simple 3-manifolds, each with connected boundary of genus at least two. Suppose that M and M' are glued via a homeomorphism between their boundaries. Then we show that, provided the gluing homeomorphism is `sufficiently…

We construct families of manifolds that have pairs of genus $g$ Heegaard splittings that must be stabilized roughly $g$ times to become equivalent. We also show that when two unstabilized, boundary-unstabilized Heegaard splittings are…

We survey known (and unknown) results about the behavior of Heegaard genus of 3-manifolds constructed via various gluings. The constructions we consider are (1) gluing together two 3-manifolds with incompressible boundary, (2) gluing…

We introduce a new technique for finding lower bounds on the Heegaard genus of a 3-manifold obtained by gluing a pair of 3-manifolds together along an incompressible torus or annulus. We deduce a number of inequalities, including one which…

Let M_1 and M_2 be compact, orientable 3-manifolds with incompressible boundary, and M the manifold obtained by gluing with a homeomorphism $\phi:\bdy M_1 \to \bdy M_2$. We analyze the relationship between the sets of low genus Heegaard…

Let M_1 and M_2 be compact, orientable 3-manifolds, and M the manifold obtained by gluing some component F of \bdy M_1 to some component of \bdy M_2 by a homeomorphism \phi. We show that when \phi is "sufficiently complicated" then (1) the…

We construct a sequence of pairs of 3-manifolds each with torus boundary and with the following two properties: 1) For the result of a carefully chosen glueing of the nth pair of 3-manifolds along their boundary tori, the ratio of the genus…

Let $M$ be a 3-manifold with torus boundary components $T_1$ and $T_2$. Let $\phi \colon T_1 \to T_2$ be a homeomorphism, $M_\phi$ the manifold obtained from $M$ by gluing $T_1$ to $T_2$ via the map $\phi$, and $T$ the image of $T_1$ in…

We construct infinitely many manifolds admitting both strongly irreducible and weakly reducible minimal genus Heegaard splittings. Both closed manifolds and manifolds with boundary tori are constructed.

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…

In this paper, we shall prove that any Heegaard splitting of a $\partial$-reducible 3-manifold $M$, say $M=W\cup V$, can be obtained by doing connected sums, boundary connected sums and self-boundary connected sums from Heegaard splittings…

Let M be a closed, irreducible, genus two 3-manifold, and F a maximal collection of pairwise disjoint, closed, orientable, incompressible surfaces embedded in M. Then each component manifold M_i of M-F has handle number at most one, i.e.…

Heegaard splittings stratify 3-manifolds by complexity; only $S^3$ admits a genus-zero splitting, and only $S^3$, $S^1 \times S^2$, and lens spaces $L(p,q)$ admit genus-one splittings. In dimension four, the second author and Jeffrey Meier…

We consider closed acylindrical surfaces in 3-manifolds and in knot and link complements, and show that the genus of these surfaces is bounded linearly by the number of tetrahedra in the triangulation of the manifold and by the number of…

Suppose M is a compact orientable irreducible 3-manifold with Heegaard splitting surfaces P and Q. Then either Q is isotopic to a possibly stabilized copy of P or the Hempel distance of the splitting P is no greater than twice the genus of…

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…

Let $T$ be a graph in a compact, orientable 3--manifold $M$ and let $\Gamma$ be a subgraph. $T$ can be placed in bridge position with respect to a Heegaard surface $H$. We show that if $H$ is what we call $(T,\Gamma)$-c-weakly reducible in…

We study the existence of incompressible embeddings of surfaces into the genus two handlebody. We show that for every compact surface with boundary, orientable or not, there is an incompressible embedding of the surface into the genus two…