Related papers: Thin position for knots in a 3-manifold
In this paper we study isotopy classes of closed connected orientable surfaces in the standard $3$-sphere. Such a surface splits the $3$-sphere into two compact connected submanifolds, and by using their Heegaard splittings, we obtain a…
We define a Heegaard-Scharlemann-Thompson (HST) splitting of a 3-manifold M to be a sequence of pairwise-disjoint, embedded surfaces, {F_i}, such that for each odd value of i, F_i is a Heegaard splitting of the submanifold of M cobounded by…
We show that the bridge number of a $t$ bridge knot in $S^3$ with respect to an unknotted genus $t$ surface is bounded below by a function of the distance of the Heegaard splitting induced by the $t$ bridges. It follows that for any natural…
Motivated by the L-space conjecture, we investigate various notions of order-detection of slopes on knot manifolds. These notions are designed to characterise when rational homology 3-spheres obtained by gluing compact manifolds along torus…
We prove that if $K_1 \subset M_1,...,K_n \subset M_n$ are m-small knots in closed orientable 3-manifolds then the Heegaard genus of $E(#_{i=1}^n K_i)$ is strictly less than the sum of the Heegaard genera of the $E(K_i)$ ($i=1,...,n$) if…
Generalizing Heegaard splittings of 3-manifolds and trisections of 4-manifolds, we consider multisections of higher-dimensional smooth (or PL) closed orientable manifolds, namely decompositions into 1-handlebodies whose subcollections…
We study distance relations in various simplicial complexes associated with low-dimensional manifolds. In particular, complexes satisfying certain topological conditions with vertices as simple multi-curves. We obtain bounds on the…
Let $X$ be a closed indefinite $4$-manifold with $b_+(X) = 3 \; ({\rm mod} \; 4)$ and with non-vanishing mod $2$ Seiberg--Witten invariants. We prove a new lower bound on the genus of a properly embedded surface in $X \setminus B^4$…
A Heegaard diagram for a 3-manifold is regarded as a pair of simplexes in the complex of curves on a surface and a Heegaard splitting as a pair of subcomplexes generated by the equivalent diagrams. We relate geometric and combinatorial…
A surface $F$ in a 3-manifold $M$ is called cylindrical if $M$ cut open along $F$ admits an essential annulus $A$. If, in addition, $(A, \partial A)$ is embedded in $(M, F)$, then we say that $F$ is strongly cylindrical. Let $M$ be a…
Fintushel and Stern have proved that if S \subset X is a symplectic surface in a symplectic 4-manifold such that S has simply-connected complement and nonnegative self-intersection, then there are infinitely many topologically equivalent…
Quantum invariants in low dimensional topology offer a wide variety of valuable invariants of knots and 3-manifolds, presented by explicit formulas that are readily computable. Their computational complexity has been actively studied and is…
We construct examples of closed non-Haken hyperbolic 3-manifolds with a Heegaard splitting of arbitrarily large distance.
We investigate the line between tight and overtwisted for surgeries on fibred transverse knots in contact 3-manifolds. When the contact structure $\xi_K$ is supported by the fibred knot $K \subset M$, we obtain a characterisation of when…
We define essential and strongly essential triangulations of 3-manifolds, and give four constructions using different tools (Heegaard splittings, hierarchies of Haken 3-manifolds, Epstein-Penner decompositions, and cut loci of Riemannian…
Given $(V_1,V_2)$ a Heegaard splitting of the complement of a composite knot $K=K_1# K_2$ in $S^3$, where $K_i, i=1,2$ are prime knots, we have a unique, up to isotopy, decomposing annulus $A$. When the intersection of $A$ and $V_1$ is a…
The long standing classification problem in the theory of Heegaard splittings of 3-manifolds is to exhibit for each closed 3-manifold a complete list, without duplication, of all its irreducible Heegaard surfaces, up to isotopy. We solve…
We define a new notion of thin position for a graph in a 3-manifold which combines the ideas of thin position for manifolds first originated by Scharlemann and Thompson with the idea of thin position for knots first originated by Gabai.…
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…
In graph theory, as well as in 3-manifold topology, there exist several width-type parameters to describe how "simple" or "thin" a given graph or 3-manifold is. These parameters, such as pathwidth or treewidth for graphs, or the concept of…