Related papers: Thin position and essential planar surfaces

Let L be a link in the 3-sphere that is in thin position but not in bridge position and let P be a thin level sphere. We generalize a result of Wu by giving a bound on the number of disjoint irreducible compressing disks that P can have,…

We show that any smooth one-dimensional link in the real projective three-plane is the fixed-point locus of a smooth symplectic surface in the complex projective three-plane which is invariant under complex conjugation. The degree of the…

It is shown that any handle-irreducible summand of every stable-ribbon surface-link is a unique ribbon surface-link up to equivalences, so that every stable-ribbon surface-link is a ribbon surface-link. This is a generalization of a…

We investigate states on the surface of strong and weak topological insulators and superconductors that have been gapped by a symmetry breaking term. The surface of a strong 3D topological insulator gapped by a magnetic material is well…

A closed geodesic on the modular surface is "low-lying" if it does not travel "high" into the cusp. It is "fundamental" if it corresponds to an element in the class group of a real quadratic field. We prove the existence of infinitely many…

Flat surfaces that correspond to $k$-differentials on compact Riemann surfaces are of finite area provided there is no pole of order $k$ or higher. We denote by \textit{flat surfaces with poles of higher order} those surfaces with flat…

A regular circle-valued Morse function on the knot complement C(K) = S^3\K is a function f from C(K) to S^1 which separates critical points and which behaves nicely in a neighborhood of the knot. Such a function induces a handle…

We prove that a special alternating knot does not decompose as a non-trivial band sum. This restricts concordances from special alternating knots, and we conjecture that special alternating knots are ribbon concordance minimal. We verify…

Edmonds famously proved that every periodic knot of genus g possesses an equivariant Seifert surface of genus g. We show that this is not true if one instead considers nonorientable spanning surfaces of a periodic knot. We demonstrate by…

A long-standing Conjecture of S. Negami states that a connected graph has a finite planar cover if and only if it embeds in the projective plane. It is known that the Conjecture is equivalent to the fact that \emph{the graph $K_{1,2, 2, 2}$…

The disjoint paths problem asks, given an graph G and k + 1 pairs of terminals (s_0,t_0), ...,(s_k,t_k), whether there are k+1 pairwise disjoint paths P_0, ...,P_k, such that P_i connects s_i to t_i. Robertson and Seymour have proven that…

We consider the asymptotic behavior of properly embedded minimal surfaces in the product of the hyperbolic plane with the line, taking into account the fact that there is more than one natural compactification of this space. This provides a…

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…

Given a (genus 2) cube-with-holes M, i.e. the complement in S^3 of a handlebody H, we relate intrinsic properties of M (like its cut number) with extrinsic features depending on the way the handlebody H is knotted in S^3. Starting from a…

We develop a word mechanism applied in knot and link diagrams for the illustration of a diagrammatic property. We also give a necessary condition for determining incompressible and pairwise incompressible surfaces, that are embedded in knot…

This note gives the first example of a hyperbolic knot in the 3-sphere that lacks a nonorientable essential spanning surface; this disproves the Strong Neuwirth Conjecture formulated by Ozawa and Rubinstein. Moreover, this knot has no even…

We show that the distance of a link $K$ with respect to a bridge surface of any genus determines a lower bound on the genus of essential surfaces and Heegaard surfaces in the manifolds that result from non-trivial Dehn surgeries on the…

We study invariant Seifert surfaces for strongly invertible knots, and prove that the gap between the equivariant genus (the minimum of the genera of invariant Seifert surfaces) of a strongly invertible knot and the (usual) genus of the…

In 1980, Thomassen stated his weak linkage conjecture: for an odd positive integer k, if a graph G is k-edge-connected, then, for any collection of k pairs of vertices {s_1,t_1}, ..., {s_k,t_k} in G, not necessarily distinct, there are…

Consider a non-planar orientable minimal surface S in a slab which is possibly with genus or with more than two boundary components. We show that there exists a catenoidal waist W in the slab whose flux has the same vertical component as S…