Related papers: Angle structures and normal surfaces

A taut ideal triangulation of a 3-manifold is a topological ideal triangulation with extra combinatorial structure: a choice of transverse orientation on each ideal 2-simplex, satisfying two simple conditions. The aim of this paper is to…

We give a simple sufficient condition for a spun-normal surface in an ideal triangulation to be incompressible, namely that it is a vertex surface with non-empty boundary which has a quadrilateral in each tetrahedron. While this condition…

It is conjectured that every cusped hyperbolic 3-manifold has a decomposition into positive volume ideal hyperbolic tetrahedra (a "geometric" triangulation of the manifold). Under a mild homology assumption on the manifold we construct…

We show that in any triangulated 3-manifold, every index n topologically minimal surface can be transformed to a surface which has local indices (as computed in each tetrahedron) that sum to at most n. This generalizes classical theorems of…

Let $M$ be a closed hyperbolic 3-manifold with a fibered face $\sigma$ of the unit ball of the Thurston norm on $H_2(M)$. If $M$ satisfies a certain condition related to Agol's veering triangulations, we construct a taut branched surface in…

Let $M\subset\mathbb{R}^3$ be a properly embedded, connected, complete surface with boundary a convex planar curve $C$, satisfying an elliptic equation $H=f(H^2-K)$, where $H$ and $K$ are the mean and the Gauss curvature respectively -…

We give a formula for the Euler characteristic of a triangulated manifold of even dimension in terms of the numbers of even-dimensional faces only. The coefficients in this formula are universal (they do not depend on the dimension of the…

Given an orientable ideally triangulated $3$--manifold $M$, we define a system of real valued equations and inequalities whose solutions can be used to construct projective structures on $M$. These equations represent a unifying framework…

This is a survey on the global theory of constant mean curvature surfaces in Riemannian homogeneous 3-manifolds. These ambient 3-manifolds include the eight canonical Thurston 3-dimensional geometries, i.e. R3, H3, S3, H2 \times R, S2…

Any two triangulations of a closed surface with the same number of vertices can be transformed into each other by a sequence of regular flips, provided the number of vertices exceeds a number N depending on the surface. Examples show that…

We propose an approach to find constant curvature metrics on triangulated closed 3-manifolds using a finite dimensional variational method whose energy function is the volume. The concept of an angle structure on a tetrahedron and on a…

Let $G$ be a Lie group and $M$ a smooth proper $G$-manifold. Let $pi:Mto M/G$ denote the natural map to the orbit space. Then there exist a PL manifold $P$, a polyhedron $L$ and homeomorphisms $tau:Pto M$ and $\sigma:M/Gto L$ such that…

We define a 2-normal surface to be one which intersects every 3-simplex of a triangulated 3-manifold in normal triangles and quadrilaterals, with one or two exceptions. The possible exceptions are a pair of octagons, a pair of unknotted…

A theory of transversely oriented spun-normal immersed surfaces in ideally triangulated 3--manifolds is developed in this paper, including linear functionals determining the boundary curves, Euler characteristic and homology class of these…

We consider the natural problem of counting isotopy classes of essential surfaces in 3-manifolds, focusing on closed essential surfaces in a broad class of hyperbolic 3-manifolds. Our main result is that the count of (possibly disconnected)…

A submanifold is said to be tangentially biharmonic if the bitension field of the isometric immersion that defines the submanifold has vanishing tangential component. The purpose of this paper is to prove that a surface in Euclidean…

For a homotopically energy-minimizing map $u: N^3\to S^1$ on a compact, oriented $3$-manifold $N$ with boundary, we establish an identity relating the average Euler characteristic of the level sets $u^{-1}\{\theta\}$ to the scalar curvature…

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…

There are many fundamental algorithmic problems on triangulated 3-manifolds whose complexities are unknown. Here we study the problem of finding a taut angle structure on a 3-manifold triangulation, whose existence has implications for both…

Discrete normal surfaces are normal surfaces whose intersection with each tetrahedron of a triangulation has at most one component. They are also natural Poincar\'e duals to 1-cocycles with $\ZZ/2\ZZ$-coefficients. For a fixed cohomology…