Let $M$ be a compact 3-manifold with a triangulation $τ$. We give an inequality relating the Euler characteristic of a surface $F$ normally embedded in $M$ with the number of normal quadrilaterals in $F$. This gives a relation between a topological invariant of the surface and a quantity derived from its combinatorial description. Secondly, we obtain an inequality relating the number of normal triangles and normal quadrilaterals of $F$, that depends on the maximum number of tetrahedrons that share a vertex in $τ$.
We interpret a normal surface in a (singular) three-manifold in terms of the homology of a chain complex. This allows us to study the relation between normal surfaces and their quadrilateral co-ordinates. Specifically, we give a proof of an (unpublished) observation independently given by Casson and Rubinstein saying that quadrilaterals determine a normal surface up to vertex linking spheres. We also characterise the quadrilateral coordinates that correspond to a normal surface in a (possibly ideal) triangulation.
Normal and almost normal surfaces are essential tools for algorithmic 3-manifold topology, but to use them requires exponentially slow enumeration algorithms in a high-dimensional vector space. The quadrilateral coordinates of Tollefson alleviate this problem considerably for normal surfaces, by reducing the dimension of this vector space from 7n to 3n (where n is the complexity of the underlying triangulation). Here we develop an analogous theory for octagonal almost normal surfaces, using quadrilateral and octagon coordinates to reduce this dimension from 10n to 6n. As an application, we sho…
The enumeration of normal surfaces is a crucial but very slow operation in algorithmic 3-manifold topology. At the heart of this operation is a polytope vertex enumeration in a high-dimensional space (standard coordinates). Tollefson's Q-theory speeds up this operation by using a much smaller space (quadrilateral coordinates), at the cost of a reduced solution set that might not always be sufficient for our needs. In this paper we present algorithms for converting between solution sets in quadrilateral and standard coordinates. As a consequence we obtain a new algorithm for enumerating all sta…
We determine all the Q-fundamental surfaces in $(p,1)$-lens spaces and $(p,2)$-lens spaces with respect to natural triangulations with $p$ tetrahedra. For general $(p,q)$-lens spaces, we give an upper bound for elements of vectors which represent Q-fundamental surfaces with no quadrilateral normal disks disjoint from the core circles of lens spaces. We also give some examples of non-orientable closed surfaces which are Q-fundamental surfaces with such quadrilateral normal disks.
We show that a topologically minimal disk in a tetrahedron with index $n$ is either a normal triangle, a normal quadrilateral, or a normal helicoid with boundary length 4(n+1). This mirrors geometric results of Colding and Minicozzi.
The concept of a normal surface in a triangulated, compact 3-manifold was generalised by Thurston to a spun-normal surface in a non-compact 3-manifold with ideal triangulation. This paper defines a boundary curve map which takes a spun-normal surface to an element of the direct sum of the first homology groups of the vertex linking surfaces. The boundary curve map is used to study the topology of a spun-normal surface as well as to determine the dimension of the projective solution space of the algebraic equations arising from the quadrilateral coordinates of spun-normal surfaces.
Tollefson described a variant of normal surface theory for 3-manifolds, called Q-theory, where only the quadrilateral coordinates are used. Suppose $M$ is a triangulated, compact, irreducible, boundary-irreducible 3-manifold. In Q-theory, if $M$ contains an essential surface, then the projective solution space has an essential surface at a vertex. One interesting situation not covered by this theorem is when $M$ is boundary reducible, e.g. $M$ is an unknot complement. We prove that in this case $M$ has an essential disc at a vertex of the Q-projective solution space.
This paper gives sharp linear bounds on the genus of a normal surface in a triangulated compact, orientable 3--manifold in terms of the quadrilaterals in its cell decomposition---different bounds arise from varying hypotheses on the surface or triangulation. Two applications of these bounds are given. First, the minimal triangulations of the product of a closed surface and the closed interval are determined. Second, an alternative approach to the realisation problem using normal surface theory is shown to be less powerful than its dual method using subcomplexes of polytopes.
We define a 2-normal surface to be one which intersects every 3-simplex of a triangulated 3-manifold in normal triangles and quadrilaterals, with one or two exceptions. The possible exceptions are a pair of octagons, a pair of unknotted tubes, an octagon and a tube, or a 12-gon. In this paper we use the theory of critical surfaces developed in earlier work to prove the existence of topologically interesting 2-normal surfaces. Our main results are (1) if a ball with normal boundary in a triangulated 3-manifold contains two almost normal 2-spheres then it contains a 2-normal 2-sphere and (2) in …
A topologically minimal surface may be isotoped into a normal form with respect to a fixed triangulation. If the intersection with each tetrahedron is simply connected, then the pieces of this normal form are triangles, quadrilaterals, and helicoids. Helical pieces can have any number of positive or negative twists. We show here that the net twisting of the helical pieces of any such surface in a given triangulated 3-manifold is bounded.
We investigate slicings of combinatorial manifolds as properly embedded co-dimension 1 submanifolds. A focus is given to dimension 3 where slicings are normal surfaces. In the case of 2-neighborly 3-manifolds and quadrangulated slicings, a lower bound on the number of quadrilaterals of normal surfaces depending on the genus g is presented. It is shown to be sharp for infinitely many values of g. Furthermore we classify slicings of combinatorial 3-manifolds with a maximum number of edges in the slicing.
Using the equivalence between the renormalized Euler characteristic of Ozsvath and Szabo, and the Turaev torsion normalized by the Casson-Walker invariant, we make calculations for $S^3_{p/q}(K)$. An alternative proof of a theorem by Ozsváth and Szabó on $L$-space surgery obstructions is provided.
Normal surface theory, a tool to represent surfaces in a triangulated 3-manifold combinatorially, is ubiquitous in computational 3-manifold theory. In this paper, we investigate a relaxed notion of normal surfaces where we remove the quadrilateral conditions. This yields normal surfaces that are no longer embedded. We prove that it is NP-hard to decide whether such a surface is immersed. Our proof uses a reduction from Boolean constraint satisfaction problems where every variable appears in at most two clauses, using a classification theorem of Feder. We also investigate variants, and provide …
We give a simple sufficient condition for a spun-normal surface in an ideal triangulation to be incompressible, namely that it is a vertex surface with non-empty boundary which has a quadrilateral in each tetrahedron. While this condition is far from being necessary, it is powerful enough to give two new results: the existence of alternating knots with non-integer boundary slopes, and a proof of the Slope Conjecture for a large class of 2-fusion knots. While the condition and conclusion are purely topological, the proof uses the Culler-Shalen theory of essential surfaces arising from ideal poi…
We study the interplay among Wall's $D(2)$ problem, normal generation conjecture (the Wiegold Conjecture) of perfect groups and Swan's problem on partial Euler characteristic and deficiency of groups. In particular, for a 3-dimensional complex $X$ of cohomological dimension 2 with a finite fundamental group, assuming the Wiegold conjecture holds, we prove that X is homotopy equivalent to a finite 2-complex after wedging a copy of sphere $S^2$.
We give a concrete example of an infinite sequence of $(p_n, q_n)$-lens spaces $L(p_n, q_n)$ with natural triangulations $T(p_n, q_n)$ with $p_n$ taterahedra such that $L(p_n, q_n)$ contains a certain non-orientable closed surface which is fundamental with respect to $T(p_n, q_n)$ and of minimal crosscap number among all closed non-orientable surfaces in $L(p_n, q_n)$ and has $n-2$ parallel sheets of normal disks of a quadrilateral type disjoint from the pair of core circles of $L(p_n, q_n)$. Actually, we can set $p_0=0, q_0=1, p_{k+1}=3p_k+2q_k$ and $q_{k+1}=p_k+q_k$.
The enumeration of normal surfaces is a key bottleneck in computational three-dimensional topology. The underlying procedure is the enumeration of admissible vertices of a high-dimensional polytope, where admissibility is a powerful but non-linear and non-convex constraint. The main results of this paper are significant improvements upon the best known asymptotic bounds on the number of admissible vertices, using polytopes in both the standard normal surface coordinate system and the streamlined quadrilateral coordinate system. To achieve these results we examine the layout of admissible point…
In formulating a non-orientable analogue of the Milnor Conjecture on the $4$-genus of torus knots, Batson developed an elegant construction that produces a smooth non-orientable spanning surface in $B^4$ for a given torus knot in $S^3$. While Lobb showed that Batson's surfaces do not always minimize the non-orientable $4$-genus, we prove that they always do minimize among surfaces that share their normal Euler number. We also completely determine the possible pairs of normal Euler number and first Betti number for non-orientable surfaces whose boundary lies in a class of torus knots for which …
We define a "circle Euler characteristic" of a circle action on a compact manifold or finite complex X. It lies in the first Hochschild homology group of ZG where G is the fundamental group of X. It is analogous in many ways to the ordinary Euler characteristic. One application is an intuitively satisfying formula for the Euler class (integer coefficients) of the normal bundle to a smooth circle action without fixed points on a manifold. In the special case of a 3-dimensional Seifert fibered space, this formula is particularly effective. \~
In this paper we study non-singular solutions of Ricci flow on a closed manifold of dimension at least 4. Amongst others we prove that, if M is a closed 4-manifold on which the normalized Ricci flow exists for all time t>0 with uniformly bounded sectional curvature, then the Euler characteristic $χ(M)\ge 0$. Moreover, the 4-manifold satisfies one of the following \noindent (i) M is a shrinking Ricci solition; \noindent (ii) M admits a positive rank F-structure; \noindent (iii) the Hitchin-Thorpe type inequality holds 2χ(M)\ge 3|τ(M)| where $χ(M)$ (resp. $τ(M)$) is the Euler characteristic (res…
For the moduli spaces of Abelian differentials, the Euler characteristic is one of the most basic intrinsic topological invariants. We give a formula for the Euler characteristic that relies on intersection theory on the smooth compactification by multi-scale differentials. It is a consequence of a formula for the full Chern polynomial of the cotangent bundle of the compactification. The main new technical tools are an Euler sequence for the cotangent bundle of the moduli space of Abelian differentials and computational tools in the Chow ring, such as normal bundles to boundary divisors.
In this paper, it is shown that every closed hyperbolic 3-manifold contains an immersed quasi-Fuchsian closed subsurface of odd Euler characteristic. The construction adopts the good pants method, and the primary new ingredient is an enhanced version of the connection principle, which allows one to connect any two frames with a path of frames in a prescribed relative homology class of the frame bundle. The existence result is applied to show that every uniform lattice of $\mathrm{PSL}(2,\mathbb{C})$ admits an exhausting nested sequence of sublattices with exponential homological torsion growth…
We prove that the mean Euler characteristic of a Gorenstein toric contact manifold, i.e. a good toric contact manifold with zero first Chern class, is equal to half the normalized volume of the corresponding toric diagram and give some applications. A particularly interesting one, obtained using a result of Batyrev and Dais, is the following: twice the mean Euler characteristic of a Gorenstein toric contact manifold is equal to the Euler characteristic of any crepant toric symplectic filling, i.e. any toric symplectic filling with zero first Chern class.
For any negative definite plumbed 3-manifold M we construct from its plumbed graph a graded Z[U]-module. This, for rational homology spheres, conjecturally equals the Heegaard-Floer homology of Ozsvath and Szabo, but it has even more structure. If M is a complex singularity link then the normalized Euler-characteristic can be compared with the analytic invariants. The Seiberg--Witten Invariant Conjecture is discussed in the light of this new object.
We show that the characteristic series for the greedy normal form of a Coxeter group is always a rational series, and prove a reciprocity formula for this series when the group is right-angled and the nerve is Eulerian. As corollaries we obtain many of the known rationality and reciprocity results for the growth series of Coxeter groups as well as some new ones.
