Given a closed four-manifold $X$ with an indefinite intersection form, we consider smoothly embedded surfaces in $X \setminus $int$(B^4)$, with boundary a knot $K \subset S^3$. We give several methods to bound the genus of such surfaces in a fixed homology class. Our tools include adjunction inequalities and the $10/8 + 4$ theorem. In particular, we present obstructions to a knot being H-slice (that is, bounding a null-homologous disk) in a four-manifold and show that the set of H-slice knots can detect exotic smooth structures on closed $4$-manifolds.
We present explicit algorithms for simplifying the topology of indefinite fibrations on 4-manifolds, which include broken Lefschetz fibrations and indefinite Morse 2-functions. The algorithms consist of sequences of moves, which modify indefinite fibrations in smooth 1-parameter families. In particular, given an arbitrary broken Lefschetz fibration, we show how to turn it to one with directed and embedded round (indefinite fold) image, and to one with all the fibers and the round locus connected. We also show how to realize any given null-homologous 1-dimensional submanifold with prescribed lo…
We discuss generic smooth maps from smooth manifolds to smooth surfaces, which we call "Morse 2-functions", and homotopies between such maps. The two central issues are to keep the fibers connected, in which case the Morse 2-function is "fiber-connected", and to avoid local extrema over 1-dimensional submanifolds of the range, in which case the Morse 2-function is "indefinite". This is foundational work for the long-range goal of defining smooth invariants from Morse 2-functions using tools analogous to classical Morse homology and Cerf theory.
It is well-known that Heegaard genus is additive under connected sum of 3-manifolds. We show that Heegaard genus of contact 3-manifolds is not necessarily additive under contact connected sum. We also prove some basic properties of the contact genus (a.k.a. open book genus) of 3-manifolds, and compute this invariant for some 3-manifolds.
We describe an example of a closed orientable 3-manifold with distinct distance three genus two Heegaard splittings. This demonstrates that the constructions of alternate genus two Heegaard splittings of closed orientable 3-manifolds described by Rubinstein and Scharlemann in their 1998 paper Genus Two Heegaard Splittings of Orientable 3-Manifolds, does not yield all alternate genus two splittings and must be augmented.
We give an algorithmic proof of the theorem that a closed orientable irreducible and atoroidal 3-manifold has only finitely many Heegaard splittings in each genus, up to isotopy. The proof gives an algorithm to determine the Heegaard genus of an atoroidal 3-manifold.
An estimate for the genus function in circle bundles over irreducible 3-manifolds is proven. This estimate is in many cases an equality and it relates the minimal genus of the surfaces representing a given homology class with the self-intersection of the class and the Thurston norm of the underlying 3-manifold.
In 2018, M. Chu and S. Tillmann gave a lower bound for the trisection genus of a closed 4-manifold in terms of the Euler characteristic of $M$ and the rank of its fundamental group. We show that given a group $G$, there exist a 4-manifold $M$ with fundamental group $G$ with trisection genus achieving Chu-Tillmann's lower bound.
An open book decomposition of a 3-manifold $M$ induces a Heegaard splitting for $M$, and the minimal genus among all Heegaard splittings induced by open book decompositions is called the \emph{open book genus} of $M$. It is conjectured by Ozbagci \cite{O} that the open book genus is additive under the connected sum of 3-manifolds. In this paper, we prove that a non-prime 3-manifold which has open book genus 2 is homeomorphic to $L(p,1)\#L(q,1)$ for some integers $p,q\neq\pm1$, that is, it has non-trivial prime pieces of open book genus 1. In particular, there cannot be a counter-example to add…
This article deals with equivalence of links in 3-manifolds of Heegaard genus 2. Starting from a description of such a manifold introduced by Casali et al., that uses 6-tuples of integers and determines a Heegaard decomposition of the manifold, we construct an algorithm (implemented in c++) which allows to find the words in $B_{2, 2n}$, the braid group on 2n strands of a surface of genus 2, that realizes the plat-equivalence for links in that manifold. In this way we extend to the case of genus 2 the result obtained by Cattabriga et al. for genus 1 manifolds. We describe explicitly the words f…
We give a necessary and sufficient condition for a simple closed curve on the boundary of a genus two handlebody to decompose the handlebody into (torus with one boundary component times [0,1]. We use this condition to decide whether a simple closed curve on a genus two Heegaard surface is a GOF-knot (genus one fibered knot) which induces the Heegaard splitting. By using this, we determine the number and the positions with respect to the Heegaard splittings of GOF-knots in the 3-manifolds with reducible genus two Heegaard splittings. This is another proof of results of Morimoto and Baker.
The Heegaard genus of a 3-manifold, as well as the growth of Heegaard genus in its finite sheeted cover spaces, has extensively been studied in terms of algebraic, geometric and topological properties of the 3-manifold. This note shows that analogous results concerning the trisection genus of a smooth, orientable 4-manifold have more general answers than their counterparts for 3-manifolds. In the case of hyperbolic 4-manifolds, upper and lower bounds are given in terms of volume and a trisection of the Davis manifold is described.
For $d\geq 2$, the regular genus of a closed connected PL $d$-manifold $M$ is the least genus (resp., half of the genus) of an orientable (resp., a non-orientable) surface into which a crystallization of $M$ imbeds regularly. The regular genus of every orientable surface equals its genus, and the regular genus of every 3-manifold equals its Heegaard genus. For every closed connected PL $4$-manifold $M$, it is known that its regular genus $\mathcal G(M)$ is at least $2 χ(M) + 5m -4$, where $m$ is the rank of the fundamental group of $M$. In this article, we introduce the concept of "weak semi-s…
We explicitly construct a genus-$3$ Lefschetz fibration over $\mathbb{S}^{2}$ whose total space is $\mathbb{T}^{2}\times \mathbb{S}^{2}\# 6\overline{\mathbb{C} P^{2}}$ using the monodromy of Matsumoto's genus-$2$ Lefschetz fibration. We then construct more genus-$3$ Lefschetz fibrations whose total spaces are exotic minimal symplectic $4$-manifolds $3 \mathbb{C} P^{2} \# q\overline{\mathbb{C} P^{2}}$ for $q=13,\ldots,19$. We also generalize our construction to get genus-$3k$ Lefschetz fibration structure on the $4$-manifold $Σ_{k}\times \mathbb{S}^{2}\# 6\overline{\mathbb{C} P^{2}}$ using the …
We show that the problem of deciding whether a knot in a fixed closed orientable 3-dimensional manifold bounds a surface of genus at most $g$ is in co-NP. This answers a question of Agol, Hass, and Thurston in 2002. Previously, this was known for rational homology 3-spheres, by the work of the first author.
Within crystallization theory, two interesting PL invariants for $d$-manifolds have been introduced and studied, namely {\it gem-complexity} and {\it regular genus}. In the present paper we prove that, for any closed connected PL $4$-manifold $M$, its gem-complexity $\mathit{k}(M)$ and its regular genus $ \mathcal G(M)$ satisfy: $$\mathit{k}(M) \ \geq \ 3 χ(M) + 10m -6 \ \ \ \text{and} \ \ \ \mathcal G(M) \ \geq \ 2 χ(M) + 5m -4,$$ where $rk(π_1(M))=m.$ These lower bounds enable to strictly improve previously known estimations for regular genus and gem-complexity of product 4-manifolds. Moreov…
We discuss an obstruction to a knot being smoothly slice that comes from minimum-genus bounds on smoothly embedded surfaces in definite 4-manifolds. As an example, we provide an alternate proof of the fact that the (2,1)-cable of the figure eight knot is not smoothly slice, as shown by Dai--Kang--Mallick--Park--Stoffregen in 2022. The main technical input of our argument consists of gauge-theoretic obstructions to smooth small-genus surfaces representing certain homology classes in $\mathbb{CP}^2\#\mathbb{CP}^2$ proved by Bryan in the 1990s.
In this paper, we add examples to Goeritz groups, the mapping class groups of given Heegaard splittings of 3-manifolds. We focus on a Heegaard splitting of genus two of a Seifert manifold whose base orbifold is sphere with three exceptional points of sufficiently complex coefficients, where "sufficiently complex" means that every surgery coefficient p_{l} over q_{l} of each exceptional fiber (in a surgery description) satisfies that q_{l} is congruent to neither +1 or -1 modulo p_{l}.
Let N be a closed irreducible 3-manifold and assume N is not a graph manifold. We improve for all but finitely many S^1-bundles M over N the adjunction inequality for the minimal complexity of embedded surfaces. This allows us to completely determine the minimal complexity of embedded surfaces in all but finitely many S^1-bundles over a large class of 3-manifolds.
Given a genus two Heegaard splitting for a non-prime 3-manifold, we define a special subcomplex of the disk complex for one of the handlebodies of the splitting, and then show that it is contractible. As applications, first we show that the complex of Haken spheres for the splitting is contractible, which refines the results of Lei and Lei-Zhang. Secondly, we classify all the genus two Heegaard splittings for non-prime 3-manifolds, which is a generalization of the result of Montesinos-Safont. Finally, we show that the mapping class group of the splitting, called the Goeritz group, is finitely …
(d+1)-colored graphs, i.e. edge-colored graphs that are (d+1)-regular, have already been proved to be a useful representation tool for compact PL d-manifolds, thus extending the theory (known as crystallization theory) originally developed for the closed case. In this context, combinatorially defined PL invariants play a relevant role. The present paper focuses in particular on generalized regular genus and G-degree: the first one extending to higher dimension the classical notion of Heegaard genus for 3-manifolds, the second one arising, within theoretical physics, from the theory of random t…
We analyze the orbifolds that can be obtained as quotients of hyperbolic 3-manifolds admitting a Heegaard splitting of genus two by their orientation preserving isometry groups. The genus two hyperbolic 3-manifolds are exactly the hyperbolic 2-fold branched coverings of 3-bridge links. If the 3-bridge link is a knot, we prove that the underlying topological space of the quotient orbifold is either the 3-sphere or a lens space and we describe the combinatorial setting of the singular set for each possible isometry group. In the case of 3-bridge links with two or three components, the situation …
本文证明了M. J. Dunwoody是透镜空间的循环覆盖（最终为$\bf S^3$），在亏格1-桥结上分支。因此，我们对Dunwoody猜想给出了肯定的回答，即一个宽子类的所有元素都是$\bf S^3$在一个纽结上分支的循环覆盖.此外，我们表明，所有的分支循环覆盖的2桥结属于这个子类，这意味着基本群的每个分支循环覆盖的2桥结承认一个几何循环介绍。
We study the double slice genus of a knot, a natural generalization of slice genus. We define a notion called band number, a natural generalization of band unknotting number, and prove it is an upper bound on double slice genus. Our bound is based on an analysis of broken surface diagrams and embedding properties of 3-manifolds in 4-manifolds.
We derive an adjunction inequality for any smooth, closed, connected, oriented 4-manifold $X$ with $b^+=1$. This inequality depends only on the cohomology algebra and generalizes the inequality of Strle in the case of $b_1=0$. We demonstrate that the inequality is especially powerful when $2\tilde χ+3σ\geq 0$, where $\tilde χ$ is the modified Euler number taking account of the cup product on $H^1$.
Let M be a 3-manifold admitting a strongly irreducible Heegaard surface S and f:M \to M an involution. We construct an invariant Heegaard surface for M of genus at most 8 g(S) - 7. As a consequence, given a (possibly branched) double cover π:M \to N we obtain the following bound on the Heegaard genus of N: g(N) \leq 4g(S) - 3. We also get a bound on the complexity of the branch set in terms of g(S). If we assume that M is non-Haken, by Casson and Gordon we may replace g(S) by g(M) in all the statements above.
For a closed 4-manifold $X$ and a knot $K$ in the boundary of punctured $X$, we define $γ_X^0(K)$ to be the smallest first Betti number of non-orientable and null-homologous surfaces in punctured $X$ with boundary $K$. Note that $γ^0_{S^4}$ is equal to the non-orientable 4-ball genus and hence $γ^0_X$ is a generalization of the non-orientable 4-ball genus. While it is very likely that for given $X$, $γ^0_X$ has no upper bound, it is difficult to show it. In fact, even in the case of $γ^0_{S^4}$, its non-boundedness was shown for the first time by Batson in 2012. In this paper, we prove that fo…
Let $M$ be a closed orientable 3-manifold with a genus two Heegaard splitting $(V_1, V_2; F)$ and a non-trivial JSJ-decomposition, where all components of the intersection of the JSJ-tori and $V_i$ are not $\partial$-parallel in $V_i$ for $i=1,2$. If $G$ is a finite group of orientation-preserving diffeomorphisms acting on $M$ which preserves each handlebody of the Heegaard splitting and each piece of the JSJ-decomposition of $M$, then $G\cong \mathbb{Z}_2$ or $\mathbb{D}_2$ if $V_j\cap(\cup T_i)$ consists of at most two disks or at most two annuli.
Let $M=W\cup_T V$ be an amalgamation of two compact 3-manifolds along a torus, where $W$ is the exterior of a knot in a homology sphere. Let $N$ be the manifold obtained by replacing $W$ with a solid torus such that the boundary of a Seifert surface in $W$ is a meridian of the solid torus. This means that there is a degree-one map $f\colon M\to N$, pinching $W$ into a solid torus while fixing $V$. We prove that $g(M)\ge g(N)$, where $g(M)$ denotes the Heegaard genus. An immediate corollary is that the tunnel number of a satellite knot is at least as large as the tunnel number of its pattern kn…
Let $M$ be a closed orientable 3-manifold with a genus two Heegaard splitting $(V_1, V_2; F)$ and a non-trivial JSJ-decomposition, where all components of the intersection of the JSJ-tori and $V_i$ are not $\partial$-parallel in $V_i$ for $i=1,2$. If $G$ is a finite group of orientation-preserving smooth actions on $M$ which preserves each handlebody of the Heegaard splitting and each piece of the JSJ-decomposition of $M$, then $G\cong \mathbb{Z}_2$ or $\mathbb{D}_2$ unless $V_j\cap(\cup T_i)$ has three or more disk components for $j=1$ or 2.
