The notion of a Bing cell is introduced, and it is used to define invariants, link groups, of 4-manifolds. Bing cells combine some features of both surfaces and 4-dimensional handlebodies, and the link group λ(M) measures certain aspects of the handle structure of a 4-manifold M. This group is a quotient of the fundamental group, and examples of manifolds are given with π_1(M) not equal to λ(M). The main construction of the paper is a generalization of the Milnor group, which is used to formulate an obstruction to embeddability of Bing cells into 4-space. Applications to the A-B slice problem and to the structure of topological arbiters are discussed.
We determine the Dehn surgeries on 2-bridge links, which yield reducible 3-manifolds. Further, we show the conditions that we obtain a torus or cable knot from one component of a 2-bridge link by a surgery on another component.
We introduce and define "oriented framed measured lamination links" in a 3-manifold $M$. These generalize oriented framed links in 3-manifolds, and are confined to 2-dimensional improperly embedded subsurfaces of the 3-manifold. Just as some framed links bound Seifert surfaces, so also some framed lamination links bound 2-dimensional measured and oriented "Seifert laminations." We show that any lamination link which bounds a 2-dimensional Seifert lamination, bounds a "taut" Seifert lamination, i.e. one of maximum Euler characteristic, subject to the condition that the Seifert lamination is car…
We study the effect of mutation on link concordance and 3-manifolds. We show that the set of links concordant to sublinks of homology boundary links is not closed under positive mutation. We show that mutation does not preserve homology cobordism classes of 3-manifolds. A significant consequence is that there exist 3-manifolds which have the same quantum SU(2)-invariants but are not homology cobordant. These results are obtained by investigating the effect of mutation on the Milnor invariants, or equivalently the Massey products.
We extend Turaev's definition of torsion invariants of 3-dimensional manifolds equipped with non-singular vector fields, by allowing (suitable) tangency circles to the boundary, and manifolds with non-zero Euler characteristic. We show that these invariants apply in particular to (the exterior of) Legendrian links in contact 3-manifolds. Our approach uses a combinatorial encoding of vector fields, based on standard spines. In this paper we extend this encoding from closed manifolds to manifolds with boundary.
M. Freedman and V. Krushkal introduced the notion of a "filling" link in a 3-manifold: a link $L$ is filling in $M$ if for any spine $G$ of $M$ disjoint from $L$, $π_1(G)$ injects into $π_1(M \setminus L )$. Freedman and Krushkal show that there exist links in the $3$-torus $T^3$ that satisfy a weaker form of filling, but they leave open the question of whether $T^3$ contains an actual filling link. We answer this question affirmatively by proving in fact that every closed, orientable 3-manifold $M$ with $\operatorname{rank}(π_1(M)) = 3$ contains a filling link.
In arxiv:1205.1274 Rieck and Yamashita defined the link volume of 3-manifolds and studied some of its basic properties. Many of these properties are similar to the corresponding properties of the hyperbolic volume. In this paper we calculate the link volume of an infinite family of prism manifolds. As a corollary, we show that (in contrast to the hyperbolic volume) the link volume is not finite-to-one.
We introduce a notion of symmetric Whitney tower cobordism between bordered 3-manifolds, aiming at the study of homology cobordism and link concordance. It is motivated by the symmetric Whitney tower approach to slicing knots and links initiated by Cochran, Orr, and Teichner. We give amenable Cheeger-Gromov rho-invariant obstructions to bordered 3-manifolds being Whitney tower cobordant. Our obstruction is related to and generalizes several prior known results, and also gives new interesting cases. As an application, our method applied to link exteriors reveals new structures on (Whitney tower…
We calculate the volume of the $7_3^2$ link cone-manifolds using the Schläfli formula. As an application, we give the volume of the cyclic coverings over the link.
We view closed orientable 3-manifolds as covers of S^3 branched over hyperbolic links. For a p-fold cover M \to S^3, branched over a hyperbolic link L, we assign the complexity p Vol(S^3 minus L) (where Vol is the hyperbolic volume). We define an invariant of 3-manifolds, called the link volume and denoted LV, that assigns to a 3-manifold M the infimum of the complexities of all possible covers M \to S^3, where the only constraint is that the branch set is a hyperbolic link. Thus the link volume measures how efficiently M can be represented as a cover of S^3. We study the basic properties of t…
It is shown that any closed three-manifold M obtained by integral surgery on a knot in the three-sphere can always be constructed from integral surgeries on a 3-component link L with each component being an unknot in the three-sphere. It is also interesting to notice that infinitely many different integral surgeries on the same link L could give the same three-manifold M.
We show that three natural decision problems about links and 3-manifolds are computationally hard, assuming some conjectures in complexity theory. The first problem is determining whether a link in the 3-sphere bounds a Seifert surface with Thurston norm at most a given integer; this is shown to be NP-complete. The second problem is the homeomorphism problem for closed 3-manifolds; this is shown to be at least as hard as the graph isomorphism problem. The third problem is determining whether a given link in the 3-sphere is a sublink of another given link; this is shown to be NP-hard.
Kirby proved that two framed links in S^3 give orientation-preserving homeomorphic results of surgery if and only if these two links are related by a sequence of two kinds of moves called stabilizations and handle-slides. Fenn and Rourke gave a necessary and sufficient condition for two framed links in a closed, oriented 3-manifold to be related by a finite sequence of these moves. The purpose of this paper is twofold. We first give a generalization of Fenn and Rourke's result to 3-manifolds with boundary. Then we apply this result to the case of framed links whose components are null-homotopi…
We consider surgery moves along (n+1)-component Brunnian links in compact connected oriented 3-manifolds, where the framing of the each component is 1/k for k in Z. We show that no finite type invariant of degree < 2n-2 can detect such a surgery move. The case of two link-homotopic Brunnian links is also considered. We relate finite type invariants of integral homology spheres obtained by such operations to Goussarov-Vassiliev invariants of Brunnian links.
We compute the $p$-primary components of the linking pairings of orientable 3-manifolds admitting a fixed-point free $S^1$-action. Using this, we show that any non-singular linking pairing on a finite abelian group with homogeneous 2-primary summand is realized by such a manifold. However, some pairings on inhomogeneous 2-groups are not realizable by any Seifert fibred 3-manifold.
It is shown that given any link-manifold, there is an algorithm to decide if the manifold contains an embedded, essential planar surface; if it does, the algorithm will construct one. If a slope on the boundary of the link-manifold is given, there is an algorithm to determine if the slope bounds an embedded punctured-disk; if a meridian slope is given, then it can be determined if a longitude bounds an embedded punctured-disk. The methods use normal surface theory but do not follow the classical approach. Properties of minimal vertex triangulations, layered-triangulations, 0--efficient triangu…
We prove that for any V>0, there exist a hyperbolic manifold M_V, so that Vol(M_V) < 2.03 and LinVol(M_V) > V. The proof requires study of cosmetic surgery on links (equivalently, fillings of manifolds with boundary tori). There is no bound on the number of components of the link (or boundary components). For statements, see the second part of the introduction. Here are two examples of the results we obtain: 1) Let K be a component of a link L in S^3. Then "most" slopes on K cannot be completed to a cosmetic surgery on L, unless K becomes a component of a Hopf link. 2) Let X be a manifold and …
Let $M$ be a compact hyperbolic $3$-manifold with volume $V$. Let $L$ be a link such that $M\setminus L$ is hyperbolic. For any hyperbolic link $L$ in $M$, in this article, we try to establish an upper bound of the length of $n^{th}$ shortest closed geodesic of $M\setminus L$ in terms of $V$.
In the prequel of this paper, Kauffman and Ogasa introduced new topological quantum invariants of compact oriented 3-manifolds with boundary where the boundary is a disjoint union of two identical surfaces. The invariants are constructed via surgery on manifolds of the form $F \times I$ where $I$ denotes the unit interval. Since virtual knots and links are represented as links in such thickened surfaces, we are able also to construct invariants in terms of virtual link diagrams (planar diagrams with virtual crossings). These invariants are new, nontrivial, and calculable examples of quantum in…
Fintushel-Stern's knot surgery gave many pairs of exotic manifolds, which are homeomorphic but non-diffeomorphic. We show that if an elliptic fibration has two parallel, oppositely oriented vanishing circles (for example $S^2\times S^2$ or Matsumoto's $S^4$), then the knot surgery gives rise to standard manifolds. The diffeomorphism can give an alternative proof that Scharlemann's manifold is standard (originally by Akbulut [Ak1]).
It is known by A. Loi and R. Piergallini that a closed, oriented, smooth 3-manifold is Stein fillable if and only if it has a positive open book decomposition. In the present paper we will show that for every link L in a Stein fillable 3-manifold there exists an additional knot L' to L such that the union of the links L and L' is the binding of a positive open book decomposition of the Stein fillable 3-manifold. To prove the assertion, we will use the divide, which is a generalization of real morsification theory of complex plane curve singularities, and 2-handle attachings along Legendrian cu…
We give a simple axiomatic definition of a rational-valued invariant s(W,V,e) of triples (W,V,e), where W is a (smooth, oriented, closed) 6-manifold and V is a 3-submanifold of W, and where e is a second rational cohomology class of the complement of V satisfying a certain condition. The definition is stated in terms of cobordisms of such triples and the signature of 4-manifolds. When W = S^6 and V is a smoothly embedded 3-sphere, and when e/2 is the Poincare dual of a Seifert surface of V, the invariant coincides with -8 times Haefliger's embedding invariant of (S^6,V). Our definition recover…
Knots and links in 3-manifolds are studied by applying intersection invariants to singular concordances. The resulting link invariants generalize the Arf invariant, the mod 2 Sato-Levine invariants, and Milnor's triple linking numbers. Besides fitting into a general theory of Whitney towers, these invariants provide obstructions to the existence of a singular concordance which can be homotoped to an embedding after stabilization by connected sums with $S^2\times S^2$. Results include classifications of stably slice links in orientable 3-manifolds, stable knot concordance in products of an orie…
We show that only finitely many links in a closed 3-manifold share the same complement, up to twists along discs and annuli. Using the same techniques, we prove that by adding 2-handles on the same link we get only finitely many smooth cobordisms between two given closed 3-manifolds. As a consequence, there are finitely many smooth closed 4-manifolds constructed from some Kirby diagram with bounded number of crossings, discs, and strands, or from some Turaev special shadow with bounded number of vertices. (These are the 4-dimensional analogues of Heegaard diagrams and special spines for 3-mani…
Let $M$ be a compact hyperbolic $3$-manifold with volume $V$. Let $L$ be a link such that $M\setminus L$ is hyperbolic. For any hyperbolic link $L$ in $M$, in this article, we establish an upper bound of the length of an $n^{th}$ shortest closed geodesic as a logarithmic function of $V$ in $M\setminus L$. Our works complement the work of Lakeland and Leininger \cite{Christopher} on the upper bound of systole length.
Recently, the explicit volume formulae for hyperbolic cone-manifolds, whose underlying space is the 3-sphere and the singular set is the knot $4_1$ and the links $5^2_1$ and $6^2_2$, have been obtained by the second named author and his collaborators. In this paper we explicitly find the hyperbolic volume for cone-manifolds with the link $6^2_3$ as singular set. Trigonometric identities (Tangent, Sine and Cosine Rules) between complex lengths of singular components and cone angles are obtained for an infinite family of two-bridge links containing $5^2_1$ and $6^2_3$.
A finite-volume hyperbolic 3-manifold geometrically bounds if it is the geodesic boundary of a finite-volume hyperbolic 4-manifold. We construct here an example of non-compact, finite-volume hyperbolic 3-manifold that geometrically bounds. The 3-manifold is the complement of a link with eight components, and its volume is roughly equal to 29.311.
A theorem of Kirby gives a necessary and sufficient condition for two framed links in S^3 to yield orientation-preserving diffeomorphic results of surgery. Kirby's theorem is an important method for constructing invariants of 3-manifolds. In this paper, we prove a variant of Kirby's theorem for null-homologous framed links in a 3-manifold. This result involves a new kind of moves, called IHX-moves, which are closely related to the IHX relation in the theory of finite type invariants. When the first homology group of M is free abelian, we give a refinement of this result to \pm1-framed, algebra…
We consider certain invariants of links in 3-manifolds, obtained by a specialization of the Turaev-Viro invariants of 3-manifolds, that we call colored Turaev-Viro invariants. Their construction is based on a presentation of a pair (M,L), where M is a closed oriented 3-manifold and L is an oriented link in M, by a triangulation of M such that each component of L is an edge. We analyze some basic properties of these invariants, including the behavior under connected sums of pairs away and along links. These properties allow us to provide examples of links in the three-sphere having the same HOM…
We consider the double twist link $J(2m+1, 2n+1)$ which is the two-bridge link corresponding to the continued fraction $(2m+1)-1/(2n+1)$. It is known that $J(2m+1, 2n+1)$ has reducible nonabelian $SL_2(\mathbb{C})$-character variety if and only if $m=n$. In this paper we give a formula for the volume of hyperbolic cone-manifolds of $J(2m+1,2m+1)$. We also give a formula for the A-polynomial 2-tuple corresponding to the canonical component of the character variety of $J(2m+1,2m+1)$.
We classify compact oriented $5$-manifolds with free fundamental group and $π_{2}$ a torsion free abelian group in terms of the second homotopy group considered as $π_1$-module, the cup product on the second cohomology of the universal covering, and the second Stiefel-Whitney class of the universal covering. We apply this to the classification of simple boundary links of $3$-spheres in $S^5$. Using this we give a complete algebraic picture of closed $5$-manifolds with free fundamental group and trivial second homology group.
We recall an extension of Kirby's Calculus on non-simply connected 3-manifolds given in [FR], and the surgery calculus of bridged links from [Ke], which involves only local moves. We give a short combinatorial proof that the two calculi are equivalent, and thus describe the same classes of 3-manifolds. This makes the proofs for the validity of surgery calculi in [FR] and [Ke] interchangeable.
We study the realization problem which asks if a given oriented link in an open 3-manifold can be realized as a fiber of a submersion to the Euclidean plane. We correct the results obtained before by the author which contains an error and certain imperfection, and investigate a necessary and sufficient condition for the realization in the words of well-known invariants. We obtain the condition expressed by the first homology group with mod 2 coefficient.
There is one generalization of fibered links in 3-manifolds, called homologically fibered links. It is known that the existence of homologically fibered links whose fiber surface has a given homeomorphic type is determined by the first homology group and its torsion linking form of the ambient 3-manifold. In this paper, we interpret the existence of homologically fibered links with that of a solution of some equation, in terms of the first homology group and its torsion linking form or a surgery diagram of the ambient manifold. As an application, we compute the ${\rm hc}(\cdot)$, defined throu…
We use topological surgery in dimension four to give sufficient conditions for the zero framed surgery manifold of a 3-component link to be homology cobordant to the 3-torus, which arises from zero framed surgery on the Borromean rings, via a topological homology cobordism preserving the homotopy classes of the meridians. This enables us to give new examples of 3-component links with unknotted components and vanishing pairwise linking numbers, such that any two of these links have homology cobordant zero surgeries in the above sense, but the zero surgery manifolds are not homeomorphic. Moreove…
This survey article describes the algorithmic approaches successfully used over the time to construct hyperbolic structures on 3-dimensional topological "objects" of various types, and to classify several classes of such objects using such structures.
We introduce a generalization of the Lisca-Ozsváth-Stipsicz-Szabó Legendrian invariant $\mathfrak L$ to links in every rational homology sphere, using the collapsed version of link Floer homology. We represent a Legendrian link $L$ in a contact 3-manifold $(M,ξ)$ with a diagram $D$, given by an open book decomposition of $(M,ξ)$ adapted to $L$, and we construct a chain complex $cCFL^-(D)$ with a special cycle in it denoted by $\mathfrak L(D)$. Then, given two diagrams $D_1$ and $D_2$ which represent Legendrian isotopic links, we prove that there is a map between the corresponding chain complex…
Relative self-linking and linking "numbers" for pairs of knots in oriented 3-manifolds are defined in terms of intersection invariants of immersed surfaces in 4-manifolds. The resulting concordance invariants generalize the usual homological notion of linking by taking into account the fundamental group of the ambient manifold and often map onto infinitely generated groups. The knot invariants generalize the cyclic (type 1) invariants of Kirk and Livingston and when taken with respect to certain preferred knots, called spherical knots, relative self-linking numbers are characterized geometrica…
We prove that a version of the Thurston-Bennequin inequality holds for Legendrian and transverse links in a rational homology contact 3-sphere $(M,ξ)$, whenever $ξ$ is tight. More specifically, we show that the self-linking number of a transverse link $T$ in $(M,ξ)$, such that the boundary of its tubular neighbourhood consists of incompressible tori, is bounded by the Thurston norm $||T||_T$ of $T$. A similar inequality is given for Legendrian links by using the notions of positive and negative transverse push-off. We apply this bound to compute the tau-invariant for every strongly quasi-posit…
Given an special type of triangulation $T$ for an oriented closed 3-manifold $M^3$ we produce a framed link in $S^3$ which induces the same $M^3$ by an algorithm of complexity $O(n^2)$ where $n$ is the number of tetrahedra in $T$ . The special class is formed by the duals of the {\em solvable gems}. These are in practice computationaly easy to obtain from any triangulation for $M^3$. The conjecture that each closed oriented 3-manifold is induced by a solvable gem has been verified in an exhaustible way for manifolds induced by gems with few vertices. Our algorithm produces framed link presenta…
To a rational homology sphere graph manifold one can associate a weighted tree invariant called splice diagram. In this article we prove a sufficient numerical condition on the splice diagram for a graph manifold to be a singularity link. We also show that if two manifolds have the same splice diagram, then their universal abelian covers are homeomorphic. To prove the last theorem we have to generalize our notions to orbifolds.
We define a new notion of thin position for a graph in a 3-manifold which combines the ideas of thin position for manifolds first originated by Scharlemann and Thompson with the idea of thin position for knots first originated by Gabai. This thin position has the property that connect summing annuli and pairs-of-pants show up as thin levels. In a forthcoming paper, this new thin position allows us to define two new families of invariants of knots, links, and graphs in 3-manifolds. The invariants in one family are similar to bridge number and the invariants in the other family are similar to Ga…
In Guts, Volume and Skein Modules of 3-Manifolds (arXiv:2010.06559), we showed that the twist number of certain hyperbolic weakly generalized alternating links can be recovered from a Jones-like polynomial, and offers a lower bound for the volume of the link complement. Here, we modify the proof to work for a larger class of links.
In this paper we describe braid equivalence for knots and links in a 3-manifold $M$ obtained by rational surgery along a framed link in $S^3$. We first prove a sharpened version of the Reidemeister theorem for links in $M$. We then give geometric formulations of the braid equivalence via mixed braids in $S^3$ using the $L$-moves and the braid band moves. We finally give algebraic formulations in terms of the mixed braid groups $B_{m,n}$ using cabling and the techniques of parting and combing for mixed braids. We also provide concrete formuli of the braid equivalence in the case where $M$ is a …
We study the set $\widehat{\mathcal S}_M$ of framed smoothly slice links which lie on the boundary of the complement of a 1-handlebody in a closed, simply connected, smooth 4-manifold $M$. We show that $\widehat{\mathcal S}_M$ is well-defined and describe how it relates to exotic phenomena in dimension four. In particular, in the case when $X$ is smooth, with a handle decompositions with no 1-handles and homeomorphic to but not smoothly embeddable in $D^4$, our results tell us that $X$ is exotic if and only if there is a link $L\hookrightarrow S^3$ which is smoothly slice in $X$, but not in $D…
