We consider 3-manifolds admitting the action of an involution such that its space of orbits is homeomorphic to $S^3.$ Such involutions are called hyperelliptic as the manifolds admitting such an action. We consider finite groups acting on 3-manifolds and containing hyperelliptic involutions whose fixed-point set has $r>2$ components. In particular we prove that a simple group containing such an involution is isomorphic to $PSL(2,q)$ for some odd prime power $q$, or to one of four other small simple groups.
We introduce hyperelliptic simplified (more generally, directed) broken Lefschetz fibrations, which is a generalization of hyperelliptic Lefschetz fibrations. We construct involutions on the total spaces of such fibrations of genus $g\geq 3$ and extend these involutions to the four-manifolds obtained by blowing up the total spaces. The extended involutions induce double branched coverings over blown up sphere bundles over the sphere. We also show that the regular fiber of such a fibration of genus $g\geq 3$ represents a non-trivial rational homology class of the total space.
In this paper, we discuss relations among several invariants of 3-manifolds including Meyer's function, the eta-invariant, the von Neumann rho-invariant and the Casson invariant from the viewpoint of the mapping class group of a surface.
We show that hyperelliptic symplectic Lefschetz fibrations are symplectically birational to two-fold covers of rational ruled surfaces, branched in a symplectically embedded surface. This reduces the classification of genus 2 fibrations to the classification of certain symplectic submanifolds in rational ruled surfaces.
For two generator free Fuchsian groups, the quotient three manifold is a genus two solid handlebody and its boundary is a hyperelliptic Riemann surface. The convex core is also a hyperelliptic Riemann surface. We find the Weierstrass points of both of these surfaces. We then generalize the notion of a hyperelliptic Riemann surface to a ``hyperelliptic'' three manifold. We show that the handlebody has a unique order two isometry fixing six unique geodesic line segments, which we call the {\sl Weierstrass lines} of the handlebody. The Weierstrass lines are, of course, the analogue of the Weierst…
We consider simply-connected $4$-manifolds admitting Lefschetz fibrations over the $2$-sphere. We explicitly construct nonhyperelliptic and hyperelliptic Lefschetz fibrations of genus $4$ on simply-connected $4$-manifolds which are exotic symplectic $4$-manifolds in the homeomorphism classes of $\mathbb{C}P^{2}\#8\overline{\mathbb{C} P^{2}}$ and $\mathbb{C} P^{2}\#9\overline{\mathbb{C} P^{2}}$, respectively. From these, we provide upper bounds for the minimal number of singular fibers of such fibrations. In addition, we prove that this number is equal to $18$ for $g=3$ when such fibrations are…
We are interested in finite groups acting orientation-preservingly on 3-manifolds (arbitrary actions, ie not necessarily free actions). In particular we consider finite groups which contain an involution with nonempty connected fixed point set. This condition is satisfied by the isometry group of any hyperbolic cyclic branched covering of a strongly invertible knot as well as by the isometry group of any hyperbolic 2-fold branched covering of a knot in the 3-sphere. In the paper we give a characterization of nonsolvable groups of this type. Then we consider some possible applications to the st…
We consider finite groups which admit a faithful, smooth action on an acyclic manifold of dimension three, four or five (e.g. euclidean space). Our first main result states that a finite group acting on an acyclic 3- or 4-manifold is isomorphic to a subgroup of the orthogonal group O(3) or O(4), respectively. The analogue remains open in dimension five (where it is not true for arbitrary continuous actions, however). We prove that the only finite nonabelian simple groups admitting a smooth action on an acyclic 5-manifold are the alternating groups A_5 and A_6, and deduce from this a short list…
We show that the only finite nonabelian simple groups which admit a locally linear, homologically trivial action on a closed simply connected 4-manifold $M$ (or on a 4-manifold with trivial first homology) are the alternating groups $A_5$, $A_6$ and the linear fractional group PSL(2,7) (we note that for homologically nontrivial actions all finite groups occur). The situation depends strongly on the second Betti number $b_2(M)$ of $M$ and has been known before if $b_2(M)$ is different from two, so the main new result of the paper concerns the case $b_2(M)=2$. We prove that the only simple group…
If a finite p-group G acts continuously on a compact topological manifold M then, with some bound C depending on M alone, G has a subgroup H of index at most C such that the H-action on M has at most C stabilizer subgroups. This result plays a crucial role in the proof of a deep conjecture of Ghys.
It is proved that an arbitrary finite group acting locally linearly, homologically trivially, and pseudofreely on a closed, simply connected 4-manifold must in fact be cyclic and act semifreely, provided the second betti number of the manifold is at least three.
Let H_g denote the closed 3-manifold obtained as the connected sum of g copies of S^2 times S^1, with free fundamental group of rank g. We prove that, for a finite group G acting on H_g which induces a faithful action on the fundamental group, there is an upper bound for the order of G which is quadratic in g, but that there does not exist a linear bound in g. This implies then a Jordan-type bound for arbitrary finite group actions on H_g which is quadratic in g. For the proofs we develop a calculus for finite group-actions on H_g, by codifying such actions by handle-orbifolds and finite graph…
We show that a certain involution on the well known homology sphere (the boundary of the Mazur manifold) induces a nontrivial homomorphism on its Heegard-Floer homology groups (recently defined by Ozsvath and Szabo). We discuss a possible application of this to constructing exotic smooth structures on 4-manifolds.
Mutation is an operation on 3-manifolds containing an embedded surface of genus 2. It is defined by cutting along the surface and regluing using the `hyperelliptic' involution, and is known to preserve many 3-manifold invariants. I show that mutation of a homology 3-sphere preserves its (instanton) Floer homology, and that a related operation on 4-manifolds preserves the Donaldson invariants. A companion article (in preparation) will treat invariants based on the Seiberg-Witten equations.
The aim of this paper is to give an upper bound for the dimension of a torus $T$ which acts on a GKM manifold $M$ effectively. In order to do that, we introduce a free abelian group of finite rank, denoted by $\mathcal{A}(Γ,α,\nabla)$, from an (abstract) $(m,n)$-type GKM graph $(Γ,α,\nabla)$. Here, an $(m,n)$-type GKM graph is the GKM graph induced from a $2m$-dimensional GKM manifold $M^{2m}$ with an effective $n$-dimensional torus $T^{n}$-action, say $(M^{2m},T^{n})$. Then it is shown that $\mathcal{A}(Γ,α,\nabla)$ has rank $\ell(> n)$ if and only if there exists an $(m,\ell)$-type GKM graph…
We obtain a number of finiteness results for groups acting on Gromov-hyperbolic spaces. In particular we show that a torsion-free locally quasiconvex hyperbolic group has only finitely many conjugacy classes of $n$-generated one-ended subgroups. We also show that the rank problem is solvable for the class of torsion-free locally quasiconvex hyperbolic groups (even though it is unsolvable for the class of all torsion-free hyperbolic groups). We apply our results to 3-manifold groups. Namely, suppose $G$ is the fundamental group of a closed hyperbolic 3-manifold fibering over a circle and suppos…
The purpose of this note is to explain a combinatorial description of closed smooth oriented 4-manifolds in terms of positive Dehn twist factorizations of surface mapping classes, and further explore these connections. This is obtained via monodromy representations of simplified broken Lefschetz fibrations on 4-manifolds, for which we provide an extension of Hurwitz moves that allows us to uniquely determine the isomorphism class of a broken Lefschetz fibration. We furthermore discuss broken Lefschetz fibrations whose monodromies are contained in special subgroups of the mapping class group; n…
In this paper we show how to obtain representations of Coxeter groups acting on H^n to certain classical groups. We determine when the kernel of such a representation is torsion-free and thus the quotient a hyperbolic n-manifold.
Let M be a closed, connected, orientable topological 4-manifold, and G be a finite group acting topologically and locally linearly on M. In this paper we investigate the Borel spectral sequence for the G-equivariant cohomology of M, and establish new bounds on the rank of G for homologically trivial actions with discrete singular set.
We provide new examples of acylindrically hyperbolic groups arising from actions on simplicial trees. In particular, we consider amalgamated products and HNN-extensions, 1-relator groups, automorphism groups of polynomial algebras, 3-manifold groups and graph products. Acylindrical hyperbolicity is then used to obtain some results about the algebraic structure, analytic properties and measure equivalence rigidity of groups from these classes.
We show that some laminar group which has an invariant veering pair of laminations is a hyperbolic 3-orbifold group. On the way, we show that from a veering pair of laminations, one can construct a loom space (in the sense of Schleimer-Segerman) as a quotient. Our approach does not assume the existence of any 3-manifold to begin with so this is a geometrization-type result, and supersedes some of the results regarding the relation among veering triangulations, pseudo-Anosov flows, taut foliations in the literature.
We prove that there exists a positive, explicit function $F(k, E)$ such that, for any group $G$ admitting a $k$-acylindrical splitting and any generating set $S$ of $G$ with $\mathrm{Ent}(G,S)<E$, we have $|S| \leq F(k, E)$. We deduce corresponding finiteness results for classes of groups possessing acylindrical splittings and acting geometrically with bounded entropy: for instance, $D$-quasiconvex $k$-malnormal amalgamated products acting on $δ$-hyperbolic spaces or on $CAT(0)$-spaces with entropy bounded by $E$. A number of finiteness results for interesting families of Riemannian or metric …
