Related papers: Thin position for knots in a 3-manifold
Meier and Zupan showed that every surface in the four-sphere admits a bridge trisection and can therefore be represented by three simple tangles. This raises the possibility of applying methods from link homology to knotted surfaces. We use…
A knot K in a closed connected orientable 3-manifold M is called a 1-genus 1-bridge knot if (M,K) has a splitting into two pairs of a solid torus V_i (i=1,2) and a boundary parallel arc in it. The splitting induces a genus two Heegaard…
We show that every p-fold strictly-cyclic branched covering of a b-bridge link in $S^3$ admits a p-symmetric Heegaard splitting - in the sense of Birman and Hilden - of genus $g=(b-1)(p-1)$. This gives a complete converse of one of the…
It is shown that every knot or link is the set of complex tangents of a 3-sphere smoothly embedded in the three-dimensional complex space. We show in fact that a one-dimensional submanifold of a closed orientable 3-manifold can be realised…
This paper studies the question of whether minimal genus Heegaard splittings of exterior spaces of knots which are connected sums are weakly reducible or not. Furthermore it is shown that the Heegaard splittings of the knots used by…
In a lens space X of order r a knot K representing an element of the fundamental group pi_1 X = Z/rZ of order s <= r contains a connected orientable surface S properly embedded in its exterior X-N(K) such that the boundary of S intersects…
The Kauffman bracket skein module $K(M)$ of a $3$-manifold $M$ is the quotient of the $\mathbb{Q}(A)$-vector space spanned by isotopy classes of links in $M$ by the Kauffman relations. A conjecture of Witten states that if $M$ is closed…
Given a self-diffeomorphism h of a closed, orientable surface S and an embedding f of S into a three-manifold M, we construct a mutant manifold N by cutting M along f(S) and regluing by h. We will consider whether there are any gluings such…
We use the combinatorial techniques of graphs of intersection to study reducible Dehn surgeries on knots in the three-sphere. In particular, in the event that a reducible surgery on a knot K in the three-sphere of slope r produces a…
We study the deformations of a smooth curve $C$ on a smooth projective threefold $V$, assuming the presence of a smooth surface $S$ satisfying $C \subset S \subset V$. Generalizing a result of Mukai and Nasu, we give a new sufficient…
In this paper we show that for a given 3-manifold and a given Heegaard splitting there are finitely many preferred decomposing systems of $3g - 3$ disjoint essential disks. These are characterized by a combinatorial criterion which is a…
Thin position for knots in the 3-sphere was introduced by Gabai and has been used in a variety of contexts. We conjecture an analogue to a theorem of Schubert and Schultens concerning the bridge number of satellite knots. For a satellite…
Let c(K;F) denote the surface crossing number of a knot K with respect to a closed connected surface F in S^3. We relate c(K;F) to the tunnel number t(K) and to the Heegaard deficiency delta(F)=g(M_1;F)+g(M_2;F)-g(F), where S^3=M_1 union_F…
We consider hyperbolic links that admit alternating projections on surfaces in compact, irreducible 3-manifolds. We show that, under some mild hypotheses, the volume of the complement of such a link is bounded below in terms of a Kauffman…
A closed 3-manifold $M$ may be described up to some indeterminacy by a Heegaard diagram $\mathcal{D}$. The question "Does $M$ smoothly embed in $\mathbb{R}^4$?'' is equivalent to a property of $\mathcal{D}$ which we call $\textit{doubly…
Given integers b, c, g, and n, we construct a manifold M containing a c-component link L so that there is a bridge surface Sigma for (M,L) of genus g that intersects L in 2b points and has distance at least n. More generally, given two…
We show that the problem of showing that a cusped 3-manifold M is not hyperbolic is in NP, assuming $S^3$-RECOGNITION is in coNP. To this end, we show that IRREDUCIBLE TOROIDAL RECOGNITION lies in NP. Along the way we unconditionally…
If M is a manifold with compressible boundary, we analyze essential disks in M, as well as incompressible, but not necessarily boundary incompressible, surfaces in M. We are most interested in the case where M is a handlebody or compression…
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…
We find all Heegaard diagrams with the property "alternating" or "weakly alternating" on a genus two orientable closed surface. Using these diagrams we give infinitely many genus two 3--manifolds, each admits an automorphism whose…