Related papers: Refilling meridians in a genus 2 handlebody comple…

We introduce and study the notion of filling links in 3-manifolds: a link L is filling in M if for any 1-spine G of M which is disjoint from L, $\pi_1(G)$ injects into $\pi_1(M\smallsetminus L)$. A weaker "k-filling" version concerns…

Let K' be a hyperbolic knot in S^3 and suppose that some Dehn surgery on K' with distance at least 3 from the meridian yields a 3-manifold M of Heegaard genus 2. We show that if M does not contain an embedded Dyck's surface (the closed…

In Guts, Volume and Skein Modules of 3-Manifolds (arXiv:2010.06559), we showed that the twist number of certain hyperbolic weakly generalized alternating links can be recovered from a Jones-like polynomial, and offers a lower bound for the…

In this paper, we describe the relation between the study of closed connected surfaces embedded in $S^3$ and the theory of handlebody-knots. By Fox's theorem, a pair of handlebody-knots is associated to a closed connected surface embedded…

Boring is an operation which converts a knot or two-component link in a 3--manifold into another knot or two-component link. It generalizes rational tangle replacement and can be described as a type of 2--handle attachment. Sutured manifold…

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…

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…

In this paper, we characterize closed incompressible surfaces of genus two in the complements of 3-bridge knots and links. This characterization includes that of essential 2-string tangle decompositions for 3-bridge knots and links.

The trace of $n$-framed surgery on a knot in $S^3$ is a 4-manifold homotopy equivalent to the 2-sphere. We characterise when a generator of the second homotopy group of such a manifold can be realised by a locally flat embedded 2-sphere…

A celebrated theorem of Kirby identifies the set of closed oriented connected 3-manifolds with the set of framed links in $S^3$ modulo two moves. We give a similar description for the set of knots (and more generally, boundary links) in…

We consider braids on $m+n$ strands, such that the first $m$ strands are trivially fixed. We denote the set of all such braids by $B_{m,n}$. Via concatenation $B_{m,n}$ acquires a group structure. The objective of this paper is to find a…

We study a generalized Witten's finiteness conjecture for the skein modules of oriented compact 3-manifolds with boundary. We formulate an equivalent version of the generalized finiteness conjecture using handlebodies and 2-handles, and…

Let $M$ be a simple 3-manifold, and $F$ be a component of $\partial M$ of genus at least 2. Let $\alpha$ and $\beta$ be separating slopes on $F$. Let $M(\alpha)$ (resp. $M(\beta)$) be the manifold obtained by adding a 2-handle along…

Given a compact orientable 3-manifold M whose boundary is a hyperbolic surface and a simple closed curve C in its boundary, every knot in M is homotopic to one whose complement admits a complete hyperbolic structure with totally geodesic…

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 give a necessary and sufficient condition for a simple closed curve on the boundary of a genus two handlebody to decompose the handlebody into (torus with one boundary component times [0,1]. We use this condition to decide whether a…

Attaching a 2-handle to a genus two or greater boundary component of a 3-manifold is a natural generalization of Dehn filling a torus boundary component. We prove that there is an interesting relationship between an essential surface in a…

We describe four hyperbolic knot complements in $\mathbb{S}^3$, each of which covers a prism orbifold: the quotient of $\mathbb{H}^3$ by the action of a discrete group generated by reflections in the faces of a polyhedron that has the…

In this paper, we consider the knot complement problem for not null-homologous knots in homology lens spaces. Let $M$ be a homology lens space with $H_1(M; \mathbb{Z}) \cong \mathbb{Z}_p$ and $K$ a not null-homologous knot in $M$. We show…

A knot K is called a 1-genus 1-bridge knot in a 3-manifold M if (M,K) has a Heegaard splitting (V_1,t_1)\cup (V_2,t_2) where V_i is a solid torus and t_i is a boundary parallel arc properly embedded in V_i. If the exterior of a knot has a…