Let $M$ be a smooth closed orientable surface, and let $F$ be the space of Morse functions on $M$ such that at least $χ(M)+1$ critical points of each function of $F$ are labeled by different labels (enumerated). Endow the space $F$ with $C^\infty$-topology. We prove the homotopy equivalence $F\sim R\times{\widetilde{\cal M}}$ where $R$ is one of the manifolds ${\mathbb R}P^3$, $S^1\times S^1$ and the point in dependence on the sign of $χ(M)$, and ${\widetilde{\cal M}}$ is the universal moduli space of framed Morse functions, which is a smooth stratified manifold. Morse inequalities for the Betti numbers of the space $F$ are obtained.
This paper begins the study of Morse theory for orbifolds, or more precisely for differentiable Deligne-Mumford stacks. The main result is an analogue of the Morse inequalities that relates the orbifold Betti numbers of an almost-complex orbifold to the critical points of a Morse function on the orbifold. We also show that a generic function on an orbifold is Morse. In obtaining these results we develop for differentiable Deligne-Mumford stacks those tools of differential geometry and topology -- flows of vector fields, the strong topology -- that are essential to the development of Morse theo…
The Morse-Bott inequalities relate the topology of a closed manifold to the topology of the critical point set of a Morse-Bott function defined on it. The Morse-Bott inequalities are sometimes stated under incorrect orientation assumptions. We show that these assumptions are insufficient with an explicit counterexample and clarify the origin of the mistake.
In these lecture notes we discuss a body of work in which Morse theory is used to construct various homology and cohomology operations. In the classical setting of algebraic topology this is done by constructing a moduli space of graph flows, using homotopy theoretic methods to construct a virtual fundamental class, and evaluating cohomology classes on this fundamental class. By using similar constructions based on "fat" or ribbon graphs, we describe how to construct string topology operations on the loop space of a manifold, using Morse theoretic techniques. Finally, we discuss how to relate …
Let M be a closed, oriented, n-dimensional manifold. In this paper we give a Morse theoretic description of the string topology operations introduced by Chas and Sullivan, and extended by the first author, Jones, Godin, and others. We do this by studying maps from surfaces with cylindrical ends to M, such that on the cylinders, they satisfy the gradient flow equation of a Morse function on the loop space, LM. We then give Morse theoretic descriptions of related constructions, such as the Thom and Euler classes of a vector bundle, as well as the shriek, or unkehr homomorphism.
Classical Morse theory proceeds by considering sublevel sets $f^{-1}(-\infty, a]$ of a Morse function $f: M \to R$, where $M$ is a smooth finite-dimensional manifold. In this paper, we study the topology of the level sets $f^{-1}(a)$ and give conditions under which the topology of $f^{-1}(a)$ changes when passing a critical value. We show that for a general class of functions, which includes all exhaustive Morse function, the topology of a regular level $f^{-1}(a)$ always changes when passing a single critical point, unless the index of the critical point is half the dimension of the manifold …
We show that the sublinearly Morse boundary of a CAT(0) cubical group with a factor system is well-defined up to homeomorphism with respect to the visual topology. The key tool used in the proof is a new topology on sublinearly Morse boundaries that is induced by group actions on hyperbolic spaces that are sufficiently nice, for example, largest acylindrical actions. Using the same techniques, we obtain a explicit description of this new topology on the sublinearly Morse boundary of any hierarchically hyperbolic group in terms of medians. Finally, we explicitly describe the sublinear Morse bou…
Let $M$ be a smooth closed orientable surface. Let $F$ be the space of Morse functions on $M$, and $\mathbb{F}^1$ the space of framed Morse functions, both endowed with $C^\infty$-topology. The space $\mathbb{F}^0$ of special framed Morse functions is defined. We prove that the inclusion mapping $\mathbb{F}^0\hookrightarrow\mathbb{F}^1$ is a homotopy equivalence. In the case when at least $χ(M)+1$ critical points of each function of $F$ are labeled, homotopy equivalences $\mathbb{\widetilde K}\sim\widetilde{\cal M}$ and $F\sim\mathbb{F}^0\sim{\mathscr D}^0\times\mathbb{\widetilde K}$ are prove…
Let $M$ be a smooth closed orientable surface. Let $F$ be the space of Morse functions on $M$ having fixed number of critical points of each index, moreover at least $χ(M)+1$ critical points are labeled by different labels (enumerated). A notion of a skew cylindric-polyhedral complex, which generalizes the notion of a polyhedral complex, is introduced. The skew cylindric-polyhedral complex $\mathbb{\widetilde K}$ (the "complex of framed Morse functions"), associated with the space $F$, is defined. In the case when $M=S^2$, the polyhedron $\mathbb{\widetilde K}$ is finite; its Euler characteris…
Let N be a closed oriented k-dimensional submanifold of the (k+2)-dimensional sphere; denote its complement by C(N). Denote by x the 1-dimensional cohomology class in C(N), dual to N. The Morse-Novikov number of C(N) is by definition the minimal possible number of critical points of a regular Morse map f from C(N) to a circle, such that f belongs to x. In the first part of this paper we study the case when N is the twist frame spun knot associated to an m-knot K. We obtain a formula which relates the Morse-Novikov numbers of N and K and generalizes the classical results of D. Roseman and E.C. …
Let $M$ be a smooth connected orientable compact surface. Denote by $F(M,S^1)$ the space of all Morse functions $f:M\to S^1$ having no critical points on the boundary of $M$ and such that for every boundary component $V$ of $M$ the restriction $f|_{V}:V\to S^1$ is either a constant map or a covering map. Endow $F(M,S^1)$ with the $C^{\infty}$-topology. In this note the connected components of $F(M,S^1)$ are classified. This result extends the results of S. V. Matveev, V. V. Sharko, and the author for the case of Morse functions being locally constant on the boundary of $M$.
Let $M$ be a compact surface and $P$ be a one dimensional manifold without boundary, that is the line $\mathbb{R}^1$ or a circle $S^1$. The classification of path-components of the space of Morse maps from $M$ into $P$ was recently obtained by S. V. Matveev and V. V. Sharko for the case $P=\mathbb{R}$. For $P=S^1$ the classification was obtained by the author. All this results can be reformulated as one theorem: "Two Morse maps $f,g:M \to P$ belong to the same path component of a space of Morse mappings from $M$ into $P$ if and only if they are homotopic and have the same number of crutucal po…
1) We introduce random discrete Morse theory as a computational scheme to measure the complicatedness of a triangulation. The idea is to try to quantify the frequence of discrete Morse matchings with a certain number of critical cells. Our measure will depend on the topology of the space, but also on how nicely the space is triangulated. (2) The scheme we propose looks for optimal discrete Morse functions with an elementary random heuristic. Despite its naïveté, this approach turns out to be very successful even in the case of huge inputs. (3) In our view the existing libraries of examples in …
Let $f$ be a real- or circle-valued Morse function on a compact surface M having exactly $n>0$ critical points. Denote by $O$ the orbit of $f$ with respect to the right action of the group of diffeomorphisms of $M$. We show that the connected components of $O$ have the homotopy type of a finite-dimensional CW-complex. Actually, these connected components are homotopy equivalent to a certain covering space of the $n$-th configuration space of the interior of $M$. As a consequence we obtain that the fundamental group of $O$ is a subgroup of the $n$-th braid group of $M$.
We classify the path-components of the space of circle-valued Morse functions on compact surfaces: two Morse functions $f, g: M\to S^1$ belong to same path-component of this space if and only if they are homotopic and have equal numbers of critical points at each index.
In this paper, we study on knots and closed incompressible surfaces in the 3-sphere via Morse functions. We show that both of knots and closed incompressible surfaces can be isotoped into a "related Morse position" simultaneously. As an application, we have following results. *Smallness of Montesinos tangles with length two and Kinoshita's theta curve *Classification of closed incompressible and meridionally incompressible surfaces in 2-bridge theta-curve and handcuff graph complements and the complements of links which admit Hopf tangle decompositions.
In this article we study algebraic properties of the specific class of groups $\mathcal{G}$ generated by direct products and wreath products. Such class of groups appears in calculation of fundamental groups of orbits of Morse functions on compact manifolds. We prove that for any group $G\in\mathcal{G}$ the ranks of the center $Z(G)$ and the quotient by commutator subgroup $G/[G,G]$ coincide. Moreover, this rank is a first Betti number of the orbit of Morse function.
We list special graphs of degree 4 with at most 3 vertices (atoms from the theory of integrable hamiltonian systems) which could be represented by a union of closed geodesics on the one of the following surfaces with metric of constant curvature: sphere, projective plane, torus, Klein bottle.
We apply Lescop's construction of $\mathbb{Z}$-equivariant perturbative invariant of knots and 3-manifolds to the explicit equivariant propagator of "AL-paths" given in arXiv:1403.8030. We obtain an invariant $\hat{Z}_n$ of certain equivalence classes of fiberwise Morse functions on a 3-manifold fibered over $S^1$, which can be considered as a higher loop analogue of the Lefschetz zeta function and whose construction will be applied to that of finite type invariants of knots in such a 3-manifold. We also give a combinatorial formula for Lescop's equivariant invariant $\mathscr{Q}$ for 3-manifo…
We give in this paper bounds for the Morse indices of a large class of simple geodesics on a surface with a generic metric. To our knowledge these bounds are the first that use only the generic hypothesis on the metric.
A pair of pants is a genus zero orientable surface with three boundary components. A pants decomposition of a surface is a finite collection of unordered pairwise disjoint simple closed curves embedded in the surface that decompose the surface into pants. In this paper we present two Morse theory based algorithms for pants decomposition of a surface mesh. Both algorithms operates on a choice of an appropriate Morse function on the surface. The first algorithm uses this Morse function to identify handles that are glued systematically to obtain a pant decomposition. The second algorithm uses the…
We introduce a notion of Morse shellings (and tilings) on finite simplicial complexes which extends the classical one and its relation to discrete Morse theory.Skeletons and barycentric subdivisions of Morse shellable (or tileable) simplicial complexes are Morse shellable (or tileable). Moreover, every triangulated closed surface is Morse shellable while every closed three-manifold carries Morse shellable triangulations. Finally, any shelling encodes a class of discrete Morse functions whose critical points are in one-to-one correspondence, preserving the index, with the critical tiles of the …
We study topology change in (2+1)D gravity coupling with non-Abelian SO(2,1) Higgs field from the point of view of Morse theory. It is shown that the Higgs potential can be identified as a Morse function. The critical points of the latter (i.e. loci of change of the spacetime topology) coincide with zeros of the Higgs field. In these critical points two-dimensional metric becomes degenerate, but the curvature remains bounded.
This paper describes how to recover the topology of a closed manifold $M$ from a good Morse function $f$ on $M$. The essential method was suggested by Cohen, Jones and Segal. They constructed a topological category $C_{f}$ and claimed that the classifying space $BC_{f}$ is homeomorphic to $M$. We prove it from a different viewpoint with them using a cell decomposition of $M$ associated to $f$. The cell complex $M_{f}$ equipped with the decomposition induces a topological category $C(M_{f})$ whose classifying space $BC(M_{f})$ is homeomorphic to $M$. We show that $C(M_{f})$ is isomorphic to $C_…
Dilation surfaces are generalizations of translation surfaces where the transition maps of the atlas are translations and homotheties with a positive ratio. In contrast with translation surfaces, the directional flow on dilation surfaces may contain trajectories accumulating on a limit cycle. Such a limit cycle is called hyperbolic because it induces a nontrivial homothety. It has been conjectured that a dilation surface with no actual hyperbolic closed geodesic is in fact a translation surface. Assuming that a dilation surface contains a horizon saddle connection, we prove that the directions…
We give a new and simple proof for the computation of the oriented and the unoriented fold cobordism groups of Morse functions on surfaces. We also compute similar cobordism groups of Morse functions based on simple stable maps of 3-manifolds into the plane. Furthermore, we show that certain cohomology classes associated with the universal complexes of singular fibers give complete invariants for all these cobordism groups. We also discuss invariants derived from hypercohomologies of the universal homology complexes of singular fibers. Finally, as an application of the theory of universal comp…
A knot is an a-small knot if its exterior does not contain closed incompressible surfaces disjoint from some incompressible Seifert surface for the knot. Using circular thin position for knots we prove that the handle number is additive under the connected sum of two a-small knots. As a consequence the Morse-Novikov number turns out to be additive under the connected sum of two a-small knots.
We construct a smooth Riemannian metric on any 3-manifold with the property that there are genus zero embedded minimal surfaces of arbitrarily high Morse index.
Scharlemann and Thompson define the width of a 3-manifold M as a notion of complexity based on the topology of M. Their original definition had the property that the adjacency relation on handles gave a linear order on handles, but here we consider a more general definition due to Saito, Scharlemann and Schultens, in which the adjacency relation on handles may give an arbitrary graph. We show that for compact hyperbolic 3-manifolds, this is linearly related to a notion of metric complexity, based on the areas of level sets of Morse functions to graphs, which we call Gromov area.
We study codimension one foliations with singularities defined locally by Bott-Morse functions on closed oriented manifolds. We carry to this setting the classical concepts of holonomy of invariant sets and stability, and prove a stability theorem in the spirit of the local stability theorem of Reeb. This yields, among other things, a good topological understanding of the leaves one may have around a center-type component of the singular set, and also of the topology of its basin. The stability theorem further allows the description of the topology of the boundary of the basin and how the topo…
A Morse 2-function is a generic smooth map from a smooth manifold to a surface. In the absence of definite folds (in which case we say that the Morse 2-function is indefinite), these are natural generalizations of broken (Lefschetz) fibrations. We prove existence and uniqueness results for indefinite Morse 2-functions mapping to arbitrary compact, oriented surfaces. "Uniqueness" means there is a set of moves which are sufficient to go between two homotopic indefinite Morse 2-functions while remaining indefinite throughout. We extend the existence and uniqueness results to indefinite, Morse 2-f…
By a Morse function on a compact manifold with boundary we mean a real-valued function without critical points near the boundary such that its critical points as well as the critical points of its restriction to the boundary are all non-degenerate. For such Morse functions, Saeki and Yamamoto have previously defined a certain notion of cusp cobordism, and computed the unoriented cusp cobordism group of Morse functions on surfaces. In this paper, we compute unoriented and oriented cusp cobordism groups of Morse functions on manifolds of any dimension by employing Levine's cusp elimination techn…
By a gradient-like flow on a closed orientable surface $M$, we mean a closed 1-form $β$ defined on $M$ punctured at a finite set of points (sources and sinks of $β$) such that there exists a Morse function $f$ on $M$, called an energy function of $β$, whose critical points coincide with equilibria of $β$, and the pair $(f,β)$ has a canonical form near each critical point of $f$. Let $\mathcal{B}=\mathcal{B}(β_0)$ be the space of all gradient-like flows on $M$ having the same types of local singularities as a flow $β_0$, and $\mathcal{F}=\mathcal{F}(f_0)$ the space of all Morse functions on $M$…
On a smooth, compact and oriented manifold without boundary, we give a complete description of the correlation function of a Morse-Smale gradient flow satisfying a certain nonresonance assumption. This is done by analyzing precisely the spectrum of the generator of such a flow acting on certain anisotropic spaces of currents. In particular, we prove that this dynamical spectrum is given by linear combinations with integer coefficients of the Lyapunov exponents at the critical points of the Morse function. Via this spectral analysis and in analogy with Hodge-de Rham theory, we give an interpret…
Given a closed manifold N and a self-indexing Morse function f: N --> R with up to four distinct Morse indices, we construct a symplectic Lefschetz fibration pi: E --> C which models the complexification of f on the disk cotangent bundle, f_C : D(T*N) --> C, when f is real analytic. By construction, pi: E --> C comes with an explicit regular fiber M and vanishing spheres V_1,...,V_m in M, one for each critical point of f. Our main result is that (E,pi) is a good model for the complexification (D(T*N),f_C) in the sense that N embeds in E as an exact Lagrangian submanifold, and in addition, pi|N…
In studies of smooth maps with good differential topological conditions such as immersions, embeddings, Morse functions and their higher dimensional versions including fold maps and application to geometry, especially algebraic and differential topology of manifolds, liftings or desingulizations of maps of appropriate classes to other maps of other appropriate classes are fundamental and important. In this paper, we consider Morse functions such that inverse images of regular values are disjoint unions of spheres, which are extensions of Morse functions with just two singular points on homotop…
Developed from geometric arguments for bounding the Morse-Novikov number of a link in terms of its tunnel number, we obtain upper and lower bounds on the handle number of a Heegaard splitting of a sutured manifold $(M,γ)$ in terms of the handle number of its decompositions along a surface representing a given 2nd homology class. Fixing the sutured structure $(M,γ)$, this leads us to develop the handle number function $h \colon H_2(M,\partial M;\mathbb{R}) \to \mathbb{N}$ which is bounded, constant on rays from the origin, and locally maximal. Furthermore, for an integral class $ξ$, $h(ξ)=0$ if…
Consider a knot $K$ in $S^3$ with uniformly distributed electric charge. Whilst solutions to the Laplace equation in terms of Dirichlet integrals are readily available, it is still of theoretical and physical interest to understand the qualitative behavior of the potential, particularly with respect to critical points and equipotential surfaces. In this paper, we demonstrate how techniques from geometric topology can yield novel insights from the perspective of electrostatics. Specifically, we show that when the knot is sufficiently close to a planar projection, we prove a lower bound on the s…
Smooth functions which are Morse on preimages of values not being local extrema and constructing natural functions of the class on connected sums of manifolds admitting these functions
For any 3-manifold M and any nonnegative integer g, we give here examples of metrics on M each of which has a sequence of embedded minimal surfaces of genus g and without Morse index bounds. On any spherical space form S^3/Gamma we construct such a metric with positive scalar curvature. More generally we construct such a metric with Scal>0 (and such surfaces) on any 3-manifold which carries a metric with Scal>0. In all but one of these examples the Hausdorff limit will be a singular minimal lamination. The singularities being in each case exactly two points lying on a closed leaf (the leaf is …
