We prove the existence of pure braids with arbitrarily many strands which are small, i.e. they contain no closed incompressible surface in the complement which is not boundary parallel. This implies the existence of irreducible non-Haken 3-manifolds of arbitrarily high Heegaard genus.
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 construct infinitely many manifolds admitting both strongly irreducible and weakly reducible minimal genus Heegaard splittings. Both closed manifolds and manifolds with boundary tori are constructed.
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…
Non-isotopic Heegaard splittings of non-minimal genus were known previously only for very special 3-manifolds. We show in this paper that they are in fact a wide spread phenomenon in 3-manifold theory: We exhibit a large class of knots and manifolds obtained by Dehn surgery on these knots which admit such splittings. Many of the manifolds have irreducible Heegaard splittings of arbitrary large genus. All these splittings are horizontal and are isotopic, after one stabilization, to a multiple stabilization of certain canonical low genus vertical Heegaard splittings.
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.
We prove a rigidity theorem for degree one maps between small 3-manifolds using Heegaard genus, and provide some applications and connections to Heegaard genus and Dehn surgery problems.
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 improve and extend to the non-orientable case a recent result of Karabas, Malicki and Nedela concerning the classification of all orientable prime 3-manifolds of Heegaard genus two, triangulated with at most 42 coloured tetrahedra.
Using the theory of hyperbolic manifolds with totally geodesic boundary, we provide for every integer n greater than 1 a class of such manifolds all having Matveev complexity equal to n and Heegaard genus equal to n+1. All the elements of this class have a single boundary component of genus n, and the numbers of distinct members of the class grows at least exponentially with n.
Let M and M' be simple 3-manifolds, each with connected boundary of genus at least two. Suppose that M and M' are glued via a homeomorphism between their boundaries. Then we show that, provided the gluing homeomorphism is `sufficiently complicated', the Heegaard genus of the amalgamated manifold is completely determined by the Heegaard genus of M and M' and the genus of their common boundary. Here, a homeomorphism is `sufficiently complicated' if it is the composition of a homeomorphism from the boundary of M to some surface S, followed by a sufficiently high power of a pseudo-Anosov on S, fol…
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 provide an algorithm to determine the Heegaard genus of simple 3-manifolds with non-empty boundary. More generally, we supply an algorithm to determine (up to ambient isotopy) all the Heegaard splittings of any given genus for the manifold. As a consequence, the tunnel number of a hyperbolic link is algorithmically computable. Our techniques rely on Rubinstein's work on almost normal surfaces, and also a new structure called a partially flat angled ideal triangulation.
Given a 3-manifold M containing an incompressible surface Q, we obtain an inequality relating the Heegaard genus of M and the Heegaard genera of the components of M - Q. Here the sum of the genera of the components of M - Q is bounded above by a linear expression in terms of the genus of M, the Euler characteristic of Q and the number of parallelism classes of essential annuli for which representatives can be simultaneously imbedded in the components of M - Q.
As previously known, all 3-manifolds of genus two can be represented by edge-coloured graphs uniquely defined by 6-tuples of integers satisfying simple conditions. The present paper describes an ``elementary transformation'' on these 6-tuples which changes the associated graph but does not change the represented manifold. This operation is a useful tool in the classification problem for 3-manifolds of genus two; in fact, it allows to define an equivalence relation on ``admissible'' 6-tuples so that equivalent 6-tuples represent the same manifold. Different equivalence classes can represent the…
It was shown by Bonahon-Otal and Hodgson-Rubinstein that any two genus-one Heegaard splittings of the same 3-manifold (typically a lens space) are isotopic. On the other hand, it was shown by Boileau, Collins and Zieschang that certain Seifert manifolds have distinct genus-two Heegaard splittings. In an earlier paper, we presented a technique for comparing Heegaard splittings of the same manifold and, using this technique, derived the uniqueness theorem for lens space splittings as a simple corollary. Here we use a similar technique to examine, in general, ways in which two non-isotopic genus-…
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…
It is shown that for given positive integers g and b, there is a number C(g,b), such that any orientable compact irreducible 3-manifold of Heegaard genus g has at most C(g,b) disjoint, nonparallel incompressible surfaces with first Betti number b_1 < b.
In this article we study the spectrum of totally geodesic surfaces of a finite volume hyperbolic 3-manifold. We show that for arithmetic hyperbolic 3-manifolds that contain a totally geodesic surface, this spectrum determines the commensurability class. In addition, we show that any finite volume hyperbolic 3-manifold has many pairs of non-isometric finite covers with identical spectra. Forgetting multiplicities, we can also construct pairs where the volume ratio is unbounded.
We consider closed acylindrical surfaces in 3-manifolds and in knot and link complements, and show that the genus of these surfaces is bounded linearly by the number of tetrahedra in the triangulation of the manifold and by the number of rational (or alternating) tangles in a projection of a link (or knot). For each g we find knots with tunnel number 2 and manifolds of Heegaard genus 3 containing acylindrical surfaces of genus g. Finally, we construct 3-bridge knots containing quasi-Fuchsinan surfaces of unbounded genus, and use them to find manifolds of Heegaard genus 2 and homology spheres o…
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 …
Let M be a closed, irreducible, genus two 3-manifold, and F a maximal collection of pairwise disjoint, closed, orientable, incompressible surfaces embedded in M. Then each component manifold M_i of M-F has handle number at most one, i.e. admits a Heegaard splitting obtained by attaching a single 1-handle to one or two components of boundary M_i. This result also holds for a decomposition of M along a maximal collection of incompressible tori.
(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 …
We prove a conjecture of Menasco and Zhang that if a tangle is completely tubing compressible then it consists of at most two families of parallel strands. This is related to problems of graphs in 3-manifold. A 1-vertex graph $Γ$ in a 3-manifold $M$ with a genus 1 Heegaard splitting is standard if it consists of one or two parallel sets of core curves lying in the Heegaard splitting solid tori of $M$ in the standard way. The above conjecture then follows from the theorem which says that a 1-vertex graph in $M$ is standard if and only if the exteriors of all its nontrivial subgraphs are handleb…
In this paper we show that all 3-manifolds of a family introduced by M. J. Dunwoody are cyclic coverings of lens spaces (eventually $\bf S^3$), branched over genus one 1-bridge knots. As a consequence, we give a positive answer to the Dunwoody conjecture that all the elements of a wide subclass are cyclic coverings of $\bf S^3$ branched over a knot. Moreover, we show that all branched cyclic coverings of a 2-bridge knot belong to this subclass; this implies that the fundamental group of each branched cyclic covering of a 2-bridge knot admits a geometric cyclic presentation.
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…
We show that after one stabilization, a strongly irreducible Heegaard splitting of suitably large genus of a graph manifold is isotopic to an amalgamation along a modified version of the system of canonical tori in the JSJ decomposition. As a corollary, two strongly irreducible Heegaard splittings of a graph manifold of suitably large genus are isotopic after at most one stabilization of the higher genus splitting.
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.
An important difference between high dimensional smooth manifolds and smooth 4-manifolds that in a 4-manifold it is not always possible to represent every middle dimensional homology class with a smoothly embedded sphere. This is true even among the simplest 4-manifolds: $X_0(K)$ obtained by attaching an $0$-framed 2-handle to the 4-ball along a knot $K$ in $S^3$. The $0$-shake genus of $K$ records the minimal genus among all smooth embedded surfaces representing a generator of the second homology of $X_0(K)$ and is clearly bounded above by the slice genus of $K$. We prove that slice genus is …
The genus-g Goeritz group is the group of isotopy classes of orientation-preserving homeomorphisms of a closed orientable 3-manifold that preserve a given genus-g Heegaard splitting of the manifold. In this work, we show that the genus-2 Goeritz group of $S^2 \times S^1$ is finitely presented, and give its explicit presentation.
We survey known (and unknown) results about the behavior of Heegaard genus of 3-manifolds constructed via various gluings. The constructions we consider are (1) gluing together two 3-manifolds with incompressible boundary, (2) gluing together the boundary components of surface times I, and (3) gluing a handlebody to the boundary of a 3-manifold. We detail those cases in which it is known when the Heegaard genus is less than what is expected after gluing.
We construct a counterexample to the Rank versus Genus Conjecture, i.e. a closed orientable hyperbolic 3-manifold with rank of its fundamental group smaller than its Heegaard genus. Moreover, we show that the discrepancy between rank and Heegaard genus can be arbitrarily large for hyperbolic 3-manifolds. We also construct toroidal such examples containing hyperbolic JSJ pieces.
We complete the classification of rank two affine manifolds in the moduli space of translation surfaces in genus three. Combined with a recent result of Mirzakhani and Wright, this completes the classification of higher rank affine manifolds in genus three.
Let $X$ be a bundle over $S^1$ with fiber a 3--manifold $M$ and with monodromy $φ$. Gay and Kirby showed that if $φ$ fixes a genus $g$ Heegaard splitting of $M$ then $X$ has a genus $6g+1$ trisection. Genus $3g+1$ trisections have been found in certain special cases, such as the case where $φ$ is trivial, and it is known that trisections of genus lower than $3g+1$ cannot exist in general. We generalize these results to prove that there exists a trisection of genus $3g+1$ whenever $φ$ fixes a genus $g$ Heegaard surface of $M$. This means that $φ$ can be nontrivial, and can preserve or switch th…