Given a triangulation of a closed, oriented, irreducible, atoroidal 3-manifold every oriented, incompressible surface may be isotoped into normal position relative to the triangulation. Such a normal oriented surface is then encoded by non-negative integer weights, 14 for each 3-simplex, that describe how many copies of each oriented normal disc type there are. The Euler characteristic and homology class are both linear functions of the weights. There is a convex polytope in the space of weights, defined by linear equations given by the combinatorics of the triangulation, whose image under the homology map is the unit ball, B, of the Thurston norm.
Applications of this approach include (1) an algorithm to compute B and hence the Thurston norm of any homology class, (2) an explicit exponential bound on the number of vertices of B in terms of the number of simplices in the triangulation, (3) an algorithm to determine the fibred faces of B and hence an algorithm to decide whether a 3-manifold fibres over the circle.
Thurston norms are invariants of 3-manifolds defined on their second homology vector spaces, and understanding the shape of their dual unit ball is a (widely) open problem. W. Thurston showed that every symmetric polygon in Z^2, whose vertices satisfy a parity property, is the dual unit ball of a Thurston norm on a 3-manifold. However, it is not known if the parity property on the vertices of polytopes is a sufficient condition in higher dimension or if their are polytopes, with mod 2 congruent vertices, that cannot be realized as dual unit balls of Thurston norms. In this article, we provide …
We show that a veering triangulation $τ$ specifies a face $σ$ of the Thurston norm ball of a closed three-manifold, and computes the Thurston norm in the cone over $σ$. Further, we show that $τ$ collates exactly the taut surfaces representing classes in the cone over $σ$ up to isotopy. The analysis includes nonlayered veering triangulations and nonfibered faces.
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 immersions. This is used to develop and implement an algorithm to compute the unit ball of the Thurston norm for cusped hyperbolic 3--manifolds of finite volume. As an application of independent interest, we give an upper bound on the minimal entropy of pseudo-Anosov maps of surfaces with number of cusps bounded linearly in genus.
We present an overview of the study of the Thurston norm, introduced by W. P. Thurston in the seminal paper "A norm for the homology of 3-manifolds" (written in 1976 and published in 1986). We first review fundamental properties of the Thurston norm of a 3-manifold, including a construction of codimension-1 taut foliations from norm-minimizing embedded surfaces, established by D. Gabai. In the main part we describe relationships between the Thurston norm and other topological invariants of a 3-manifold: the Alexander polynomial and its various generalizations, Reidemeister torsion, the Seiberg…
We construct an invariant called guts for second homology classes in irreducible 3-manifolds with toral boundary and non-degenerate Thurston norm. We prove that the guts of second homology classes in each Thurston cone are invariant under a natural condition. We show that the guts of different homology classes are related by sutured decompositions. As an application, an invariant of knot complements is given and is computed in a few interesting cases. Besides, we show that the dimension of a maximal simplex in a Kakimizu Complex is an invariant.
We describe a general method to compute the $\mathbb{Z}_2$-Thurston norm for every $\mathbb{Z}_2$-homology class in an orientable Seifert manifold with orientable orbit surface. Our main tools are pseudo-horizontal surfaces. We give a necessary and sufficient criterion for the existence of pseudo-horizontal surfaces, calculate the non-orientable genera for such surfaces, and detect their $\mathbb{Z}_2$-homology classes. We then describe an algorithm to calculate the $\mathbb{Z}_2$-Thurston norm of each $\mathbb{Z}_2$-homology classes. We also present several interesting examples.
We show that the problem of determining whether a knot in the 3-sphere is non-trivial lies in NP. This is a consequence of the following more general result. The problem of determining whether the Thurston norm of a second homology class in a compact orientable 3-manifold is equal to a given integer is in NP. As a corollary, the problem of determining the genus of a knot in the 3-sphere is in NP. We also show that the problem of determining whether a compact orientable 3-manifold has incompressible boundary is in NP.
In 1976, Thurston proved that taut foliations on closed hyperbolic 3-manifolds have Euler class of norm at most one, and conjectured that conversely, any integral second cohomology class with norm equal to one is the Euler class of a taut foliation. This is the first from a series of two papers that together give a negative answer to Thurston's conjecture. Here counterexamples have been constructed conditional on the fully marked surface theorem. In the second paper, joint with David Gabai, a proof of the fully marked surface theorem is given.
Higher-Order Polynomial Invariants of 3-Manifolds Giving Lower Bounds for the Thurston Norm
定义群G的新不变量delta_n的无穷序列，它度量G的导出列的连续不变量的大小。当G是3-流形的基本群时，得到了新的3-流形不变量.这些不变量与三维流形的拓扑结构密切相关。他们给下界瑟斯顿规范提供更好的估计比麦克马伦使用亚历山大规范建立的界限。我们还证明了delta_n对S^1上的3-流形和塞弗特纤维化的3-流形都是障碍。此外，我们还证明了，即使Seiberg-Witten不变量给出的障碍失败，delta_n也会给具有辛结构的形式为X x S^1的4-流形提供可计算的代数障碍。S^3中纽结和链环的最小绳长和类也有应用。
