We give a self-contained introduction to the theory of Turaev's shadows as a tool to study 3 and 4-manifolds. The goal of the present paper twofold: on one side it is intended to be a shortcut to a basic use of the theory of shadows, on the other side it gives a sketchy overview of some of the recent results on shadows. No original result is proved here and most of the details of the proofs are not included.
In this paper we find infinitely many Mazur type manifolds and corks with shadow complexity one among the 4-manifolds constructed from contractible special polyhedra having one true vertex by using the notion of Turaev's shadow. We also find such manifolds among 4-manifolds constructed from Bing's house. Our manifolds with shadow complexity one contain the Mazur manifolds $W^{\pm }(l,k)$ which were studied by Akbulut and Kirby.
We prove that a closed 4-manifold has shadow-complexity zero if and only if it is a kind of 4-dimensional graph manifold, which decomposes into some particular blocks along embedded copies of S^2 x S^1, plus some complex projective spaces. We deduce a classification of all 4-manifolds with finite fundamental group and shadow-complexity zero.
In terms of Turaev's shadows, we provide a sufficient condition for a compact, smooth, acyclic 4-manifold with boundary the 3-sphere to be diffeomorphic to the standard 4-ball. As a consequence, we prove that if a compact, smooth, acyclic 4-manifold with boundary the 3-sphere has shadow-complexity at most 2, then it is diffeomorphic to the standard 4-ball.
We construct an infinite family $\{ C_{n,k}\}_{k=1}^{\infty}$ of corks of Mazur type satisfying $2n\leq \mathrm{sc}^{\mathrm{sp}}(C_{n,k})\leq O(n^{3/2})$ for any positive integer $n$. Furthermore, using these corks, we construct an infinite family $\{(W_{n,k},W'_{n,k})\}_{k=1}^{\infty}$ of exotic pairs of $4$-manifolds with boundary whose special shadow-complexities satisfy the above inequalities. We also discuss exotic pairs with small shadow-complexity.
Our purpose is to classify acyclic 4-manifolds having shadow complexity zero. In this paper, we focus on simple polyhedra and discuss this problem combinatorially. We consider a shadowed polyhedron $X$ and a simple polyhedron $X_0$ that is obtained by collapsing from $X$. Then we prove that there exists a canonical way to equip internal regions of $X_0$ with gleams so that two 4-manifolds reconstructed from $X_0$ and $X$ are diffeomorphic. We also show that any acyclic simple polyhedron whose singular set is a union of circles can collapse onto a disk. As a consequence of these results, we pro…
Turaev's shadow can be seen locally as the Stein factorization of a stable map. In this paper, we define the notion of stable map complexity for a compact orientable 3-manifold bounded by (possibly empty) tori counting, with some weights, the minimal number of singular fibers of codimension 2 of stable maps into the real plane, and prove that this number equals the minimal number of vertices of its branched shadows. In consequence, we give a complete characterization of hyperbolic links in the 3-sphere whose exteriors have stable map complexity 1 in terms of Dehn surgeries, and also give an ob…
We study the set of all closed oriented smooth 4-manifolds experimentally, according to a suitable complexity defined using Turaev's shadows. This complexity roughly measures how complicated the 2-skeleton of the 4-manifold is. We characterise here all the closed oriented 4-manifolds that have complexity at most one. They are generated by a certain set of 20 blocks, that are some basic 4-manifolds with boundary consisting of copies of $S^2 \times S^1$, plus connected sums with some copies of $\mathbb{CP}^2$ with either orientation. All the manifolds generated by these blocks are doubles. Many …
We define and study branched shadows of 4-manifolds as a combination of branched spines of 3-manifolds and Turaev's shadows. We use these objects to combinatorially represent 4-manifolds equipped with $Spin^c$-structures and homotopy classes of almost complex structures. We then use branched shadows to study complex 4-manifolds and prove that each almost complex structure on a 4-handlebody is homotopic to a complex one.
A shadowed polyhedron is a simple polyhedron equipped with half integers on regions, called gleams, which represents a compact, oriented, smooth 4-manifold. The polyhedron is embedded in the 4-manifold and it is called a shadow of that manifold. A subpolyhedron of a shadow represents a possibly singular subsurface in the 4-manifold. In this paper, we focus on contractible shadows obtained from the unit disk by attaching annuli along generically immersed closed curves on the disk. In this case, the 4-manifold is always a 4-ball. Milnor fibers of plane curve singularities and complexified real l…
We provide sufficient conditions assuring that a suitably decorated 2-polyhedron can be thickened to a compact 4-dimensional Stein domain. We also study a class of flat polyhedra in 4-manifolds and find conditions assuring that they admit Stein, compact neighborhoods. We base our calculations on Turaev's shadows suitably "smoothed"; the conditions we find are purely algebraic and combinatorial. Applying our results, we provide examples of hyperbolic 3-manifolds admitting "many" positive and negative Stein fillable contact structures, and prove a 4-dimensional analogue of Oertel's result on inc…
This is a PhD thesis about low dimensional topology, in particular knot thory in 3-manifolds also different from the 3-sphere, topological applications of quantum invariants, and Turaev's shadows. There is an introduction and a survey for these topics. The thesis uses skein theory and focues on the connected sum of copies of S^1xS^2 and on the 3-tours as ambient manifolds. The skein space of the 3-torus is computed. The Tait conjecture and Eisermann's theorem have been extended to the connected sums of copies of S^1xS^2. The knots and links in S^1xS^2 whose crossing number is at most 3 are tab…
Turaev's shadow formula calculates the SU(2)-Reshetikhin-Turaev-Witten invariants using shadows, and its expression is somehow similar to a Euler characteristic. We give a short proof of this formula using skein theory. The formula applies to pairs (M,G) where M is a closed oriented 3-manifold and GcM is a (possibly empty) colored framed trivalent graph (for instance, a framed knot or link).
It is known since 1954 that every 3-manifold bounds a 4-manifold. Thus, for instance, every 3-manifold has a surgery diagram. There are several proofs of this fact, including constructive proofs, but there has been little attention to the complexity of the 4-manifold produced. Given a 3-manifold M of complexity n, we show how to construct a 4-manifold bounded by M of complexity O(n^2). Here we measure ``complexity'' of a piecewise-linear manifold by the minimum number of n-simplices in a triangulation. It is an open question whether this quadratic bound can be replaced by a linear bound. The p…
We consider the classical problem of a position of n-dimensional manifold M in R^{n+2}. We show that we can define the fundamental (n+1)-cycle and the shadow fundamental (n+2)-cycle for a fundamental quandle of a knotting M to R^{n+2}. In particular, we show that for any fixed quandle, quandle coloring, and shadow quandle coloring, of a diagram of M embedded in R^{n+2} we have (n+1)- and (n+2)-(co)cycle invariants (i.e. invariant under Roseman moves). We speculate on a similar construction for general Yang-Baxter operators.
We prove that every smoothly embedded surface in a 4--manifold can be isotoped to be in bridge position with respect to a given trisection of the ambient 4--manifold; that is, after isotopy, the surface meets components of the trisection in trivial disks or arcs. Such a decomposition, which we call a \emph{generalized bridge trisection}, extends the authors' definition of bridge trisections for surfaces in $S^4$. Using this new construction, we give diagrammatic representations called \emph{shadow diagrams} for knotted surfaces in 4--manifolds. We also provide a low-complexity classification f…
We give a method for constructing a shadowed polyhedron from a divide. The 4-manifold reconstructed from a shadowed polyhedron admits the structure of a Lefschetz fibration if it satisfies a certain property, which we call the LF-property. We will show that the shadowed polyhedron constructed from a divide satisfies this property and the Lefschetz fibration of this polyhedron is isomorphic to the Lefschetz fibration of the divide. Furthermore, applying the same technique to certain free divides we will show that the links of those free divides are fibered with positive monodromy.
Knotted trivalent graphs (KTGs) form a rich algebra with a few simple operations: connected sum, unzip, and bubbling. With these operations, KTGs are generated by the unknotted tetrahedron and Moebius strips. Many previously known representations of knots, including knot diagrams and non-associative tangles, can be turned into KTG presentations in a natural way. Often two sequences of KTG operations produce the same output on all inputs. These `elementary' relations can be subtle: for instance, there is a planar algebra of KTGs with a distinguished cycle. Studying these relations naturally lea…
We propose the Volume Conjecture for the relative Reshetikhin-Turaev invariants of a closed oriented $3$-manifold with a colored framed link inside it whose asymptotic behavior is related to the volume and the Chern-Simons invariant of the hyperbolic cone metric on the manifold with singular locus the link and cone angles determined by the coloring. We prove the conjecture in the case that the ambient $3$-manifold is obtained by doing an integral surgery along some components of a fundamental shadow link and the complement of the link in the ambient manifold is homeomorphic to the fundamental …
For each $g \ge 2$, we prove existence of a computable constant $ε(g) > 0$ such that if $S$ is a strongly irreducible Heegaard surface of genus $g$ in a complete hyperbolic 3-manifold $M$ and $γ$ is a simple geodesic of length less than $ε(g)$ in $M$, then $γ$ is isotopic into $S$.
Given a geometrically finite hyperbolic cone-manifold, with the cone singularity sufficiently short, we construct a one parameter family of cone-manifolds decreasing the cone angle to zero. We also control the geometry of this one parameter family via the Schwarzian derivative of the projective boundary and the length of closed geodesics.
