A family of one-vertex triangulations of 3-manifolds, layered-triangulations, is defined. Layered-triangulations are first described for handlebodies and then extended to all 3-manifolds via Heegaard splittings. A complete and detailed analysis of layered-triangulations is given in the cases of the solid torus and lens spaces, including the classification of all normal and almost normal surfaces in these triangulations. Minimal layered-triangulations of lens spaces provide a common setting for new proofs of the classification of lens spaces admitting an embedded non orientable surface and the classification of embedded non orientable surfaces in each such lens space, as well as a new proof of the uniqueness of Heegaard splittings of lens spaces. Canonical triangulations of Dehn fillings, triangulated Dehn fillings, are constructed and applied to the study of Heegaard splittings and efficient triangulations of Dehn fillings. A new presentation of 3-manifolds as being obtained from special layered-triangulations of handlebodies with one-vertex, 2-symmetric triangulations on their boundaries, called triangulated Heegaard splittings, is defined and explored. The 1-skeleton (L-graph) of the complex determined as the quotient of the flip-complex by considering those homemorphisms of the genus g surface that extend to a homeomorphism of the genus g handlebody is used to organize much of the work. Numerous questions remain open, particularly in relation to the L-graph, 2-symmetric triangulations of a closed orientable surface, minimal layered-triangulations of genus-g-handlebodies, and the relationship of layered-triangulations to foliations.
The notion of a layered triangulation of a lens space was defined by Jaco and Rubinstein in earlier work, and, unless the lens space is L(3,1), a layered triangulation with the minimal number of tetrahedra was shown to be unique and termed its "minimal layered triangulation." This paper proves that for each integer n>1, the minimal layered triangulation of the lens space L(2n,1) is its unique minimal triangulation. More generally, the minimal triangulations (and hence the complexity) are determined for an infinite family of lens spaces containing the lens spaces L(2n,1).
The triangulation complexity of a compact 3-manifold is the minimal number of tetrahedra in any triangulation of the 3-manifold. We compute the triangulation complexity of all elliptic 3-manifolds and all sol 3-manifolds, to within a universally bounded multiplicative error.
Quasitoric manifolds, introduced by M. Davis and T. Januskiewicz in 1991, are topological generalizations of smooth complex projective spaces. In 1992, Banchoff and Kühnel constructed a 10-vertex equilibrium triangulations of $\CP^2$. We generalize this construction for quasitoric manifolds and construct some equilibrium triangulations of $4$-dimensional quasitoric manifolds. In some cases, our constructions give vertex minimal equilibrium triangulations.
We define a combinatorial structure on 3-manifolds that combines the model manifolds constructed in Minsky's proof of the ending lamination conjecture with the layered triangulations defined by Jaco and Rubinstein.
0-efficient triangulations of 3-manifolds are defined and studied. It is shown that any triangulation of a closed, orientable, irreducible 3-manifold M can be modified to a 0-efficient triangulation or M can be shown to be one of the manifolds S^3, RP^3 or L(3,1). Similarly, any triangulation of a compact, orientable, irreducible, boundary-irreducible 3-manifold can be modified to a 0-efficient triangulation. The notion of a 0-efficient ideal triangulation is defined. It is shown if M is a compact, orientable, irreducible, boundary-irreducible 3-manifold having no essential annuli and distinct…
We define essential and strongly essential triangulations of 3-manifolds, and give four constructions using different tools (Heegaard splittings, hierarchies of Haken 3-manifolds, Epstein-Penner decompositions, and cut loci of Riemannian manifolds) to obtain triangulations with these properties under various hypotheses on the topology or geometry of the manifold. We also show that a semi-angle structure is a sufficient condition for a triangulation of a 3-manifold to be essential, and a strict angle structure is a sufficient condition for a triangulation to be strongly essential. Moreover, alg…
It is not completely unreasonable to expect that a computable function bounding the number of Pachner moves needed to change any triangulation of a given 3-manifold into any other triangulation of the same 3-manifold exists. In this paper we describe a procedure yielding an explicit formula for such a function if the 3-manifold in question is a Seifert fibred space.
We generalise work of Young-Eun Choi to the setting of ideal triangulations with vertex links of arbitrary genus, showing that the set of all (possibly incomplete) hyperbolic cone-manifold structures realised by positively oriented hyperbolic ideal tetrahedra on a given topological ideal triangulation and with prescribed cone angles at all edges is (if non-empty) a smooth complex manifold of dimension the sum of the genera of the vertex links. Moreover, we show that the complex lengths of a collection of peripheral elements give a local holomorphic parameterisation of this manifold.
A triangulation of a compact 3-manifold is annular-efficient if it is 0-efficient and the only normal, incompressible annuli are thin edge-linking. If a compact 3-manifold has an annular-efficient triangulation, then it is irreducible, boundary-irreducible, and an-annular. Conversely, it is shown that for a compact, irreducible, boundary-irreducible, and an-annular 3-manifold, any triangulation can be modified to an annular-efficient triangulation. It follows that for a manifold satisfying this hypothesis, there are only a finite number of boundary slopes for incompressible and boundary-incomp…
Tight triangulated manifolds are generalisations of neighborly triangulations of closed surfaces and are interesting objects in Combinatorial Topology. Tight triangulated manifolds are conjectured to be minimal. Except few, all the known tight triangulated manifolds are stacked. It is known that locally stacked tight triangulated manifolds are strongly minimal. Except for three infinite series and neighborly surfaces, very few tight triangulated manifolds are known. From some recent works, we know more on tight triangulation. In this article, we present a survey on the works done on tight tria…
In this paper, we explore minimal contact triangulations on contact 3-manifolds. We give many explicit examples of contact triangulations that are close to minimal ones. The main results of this article say that on any closed oriented 3-manifold the number of vertices for minimal contact triangulations for overtwisted contact structures grows at most linearly with respect to the relative $d^3$ invariant. We conjecture that this bound is optimal. We also discuss, in great details, contact triangulations for a certain family of overtwisted contact structures on 3-torus.
In this thesis, we use normal surface theory to understand certain properties of minimal triangulations of compact orientable 3-manifolds. We describe the collapsing process of normal 2-spheres and disks. Using some geometrical constructions to take connected sums of triangulated 3-manifolds, we obtain the following result: given a minimal triangulation of a closed orientable 3-manifold M, it takes polynomial time in the number of tetrahedra to check if M is reducible or not.
It is conjectured that every cusped hyperbolic 3-manifold has a decomposition into positive volume ideal hyperbolic tetrahedra (a "geometric" triangulation of the manifold). Under a mild homology assumption on the manifold we construct topological ideal triangulations which admit a strict angle structure, which is a necessary condition for the triangulation to be geometric. In particular, every knot or link complement in the 3-sphere has such a triangulation. We also give an example of a triangulation without a strict angle structure, where the obstruction is related to the homology hypothesis…
A census is presented of all closed non-orientable 3-manifold triangulations formed from at most seven tetrahedra satisfying the additional constraints of minimality and P^2-irreducibility. The eight different 3-manifolds represented by these 41 different triangulations are identified and described in detail, with particular attention paid to the recurring combinatorial structures that are shared amongst the different triangulations. Using these recurring structures, the resulting triangulations are generalised to infinite families that allow similar triangulations of additional 3-manifolds to…
This paper uses results on the classification of minimal triangulations of 3-manifolds to produce additional results, using covering spaces. Using previous work on minimal triangulations of lens spaces, it is shown that the lens space $L(4k, 2k-1)$ and the generalised quaternionic space $S^3/Q_{4k}$ have complexity $k,$ where $k\ge 2.$ Moreover, it is shown that their minimal triangulations are unique.
Previous work of the authors studies minimal triangulations of closed 3-manifolds using a characterisation of low degree edges, embedded layered solid torus subcomplexes and 1-dimensional $\mathbb{Z}_2$-cohomology. The underlying blueprint is now used in the study of minimal ideal triangulations. As an application, it is shown that the monodromy ideal triangulations of the hyperbolic once-punctured torus bundles are minimal.
Certain fibered hyperbolic 3-manifolds admit a $\mathit{\text{layered veering triangulation}}$, which can be constructed algorithmically given the stable lamination of the monodromy. These triangulations were introduced by Agol in 2011, and have been further studied by several others in the years since. We obtain experimental results which shed light on the combinatorial structure of veering triangulations, and its relation to certain topological invariants of the underlying manifold.
Refining the notion of an ideal triangulation of a compact three-manifold, we provide in this paper a combinatorial presentation of the set of pairs (M,a), where M is a three-manifold and a is a collection of properly embedded arcs. We also show that certain well-understood combinatorial moves are sufficient to relate to each other any two refined triangulations representing the same (M,a). Our proof does not assume the Matveev-Pergallini calculus for ideal triangulations, and actually easily implies this calculus.
It is not known whether there exists a computable function bounding the number of Pachner moves needed to connect any two triangulation of a compact 3-manifold. In this paper we find an explicit bound of this kind for all Haken 3-manifolds which contain no fibred submanifolds as strongly simple pieces of their JSJ-decomposition. The explicit formula for the bound is in terms of the number of tetrahedra in the two triangulations. This implies a conceptually trivial algorithm for recognising any non-fibred knot complement among all 3-manifolds.
This paper considers "geometric" ideal triangulations of cusped hyperbolic 3-manifolds, i.e. decompositions into positive volume ideal hyperbolic tetrahedra. We exhibit infinitely many geometric ideal triangulations of the figure eight knot complement. As far as we know, this is the first construction of infinitely many geometric triangulations of a cusped hyperbolic 3-manifold. In contrast, our approach does not extend to the figure eight sister manifold, and it is unknown if there are infinitely many geometric triangulations for this manifold.
Previous work of the authors with Bus Jaco determined a lower bound on the complexity of cusped hyperbolic 3-manifolds and showed that it is attained by the monodromy ideal triangulations of once-punctured torus bundles. This paper exhibits an infinite family of minimal ideal triangulations of Dehn fillings on the link $8^3_9$ that also attain this lower bound on complexity.
We show that a complete hyperbolic n-manifold has a geodesic triangulation such that the tetrahedra contained in the thick part are L-bilipschitz diffeomorphic to the standard Euclidean n-simplex, for some constant L depending only on the dimension and the constant used to define the thick-thin decomposition of M.
A mostly expository account of old questions about the relationship between polyhedra and topological manifolds. Topics are old topological results, new gauge theory results (with speculations about next directions), and history of the questions.
Let $M$ be a closed $n$-manifold with nonzero simplicial volume. A central result in systolic geometry from Gromov is that systolic volume of $M$ is related to its simplicial volume. In this short note, we show that systolic volume of hyperbolic manifolds is related to triangulation complexity. The proof is based on Jørgensen and Thurston's theorem of hyperbolic volume.
A taut ideal triangulation of a 3-manifold is a topological ideal triangulation with extra combinatorial structure: a choice of transverse orientation on each ideal 2-simplex, satisfying two simple conditions. The aim of this paper is to demonstrate that taut ideal triangulations are very common, and that their behaviour is very similar to that of a taut foliation. For example, by studying normal surfaces in taut ideal triangulations, we give a new proof of Gabai's result that the singular genus of a knot in the 3-sphere is equal to its genus.
We define a new combinatorial class of triangulations of closed 3-manifolds, satisfying a weak version of 0-efficiency combined with a weak version of minimality, and study them using twisted squares. As an application, we obtain strong restrictions on the topology of a 3-manifold from the existence of non-smooth maxima of the volume function on the space of circle-valued angle structures.
We study lower bounds for the number of vertices in a PL-triangulation of a given manifold $M$. While most of the previous estimates are based on the dimension and the connectivity of $M$, we show that further information can be extracted by studying the structure of the fundamental group of $M$ and applying techniques from the Lusternik-Schnirelmann category theory. In particular, we prove that every PL-triangulation of a $d$-dimensional manifold ($d\ge 3$) whose fundamental group is not free has at least $3d+1$ vertices. As a corollary, every $d$-dimensional ($\mathbb{Z}_p$-)homology sphere …
This is the second in a series of papers in which we investigate ideal triangulations of the interiors of compact 3-manifolds with tori or Klein bottle boundaries. Such triangulations have been used with great effect, following the pioneering work of Thurston. Ideal triangulations are the basis of the computer program SNAPPEA of Weeks and the program SNAP of Coulson, Goodman, Hodgson and Neumann. Casson has also written a program to find hyperbolic structures on such 3-manifolds, by solving Thurston's hyperbolic gluing equations for ideal triangulations. In this second paper, we study the ques…
A celebrated result concerning triangulations of a given closed 3-manifold is that any two triangulations with the same number of vertices are connected by a sequence of so-called 2-3 and 3-2 moves. A similar result is known for ideal triangulations of topologically finite non-compact 3-manifolds. These results build on classical work that goes back to Alexander, Newman, Moise, and Pachner. The key special case of 1-vertex triangulations of closed 3-manifolds was independently proven by Matveev and Piergallini. The general result for closed 3-manifolds can be found in work of Benedetti and Pet…
We show that if a cusped hyperbolic manifold is Platonic, i.e., can be decomposed into isometric Platonic solids, it can also be decomposed into geodesic ideal tetrahedra.
Matveev and Piergallini independently showed that, with a small number of known exceptions, any triangulation of a three-manifold can be transformed into any other triangulation of the same three-manifold with the same number of vertices, via a sequence of 2-3 and 3-2 moves. We can interpret this as showing that the Pachner graph of such triangulations is connected. In this paper, we extend this result to show that (again with a small number of known exceptions), the subgraph of the Pachner graph consisting of triangulations without degree one edges is also connected, for single-vertex triangu…
In this paper we will promote the 3D index of an ideal triangulation T of an oriented cusped 3-manifold M (a collection of q-series with integer coefficients, introduced by Dimofte-Gaiotto-Gukov) to a topological invariant of oriented cusped hyperbolic 3-manifolds. To achieve our goal we show that (a) T admits an index structure if and only if T is 1-efficient and (b) if M is hyperbolic, it has a canonical set of 1-efficient ideal triangulations related by 2-3 and 0-2 moves which preserve the 3D index. We illustrate our results with several examples.
It is known that an ideal triangulation of a compact $3$-manifold with nonempty boundary is minimal if and only if it contains the minimum number of edges among all ideal triangulations of the manifold. Therefore, any ideal one-edge triangulation (i.e., an ideal singular triangulation with exactly one edge) is minimal. Vesnin, Turaev, and the first author showed that an ideal two-edge triangulation is minimal if no $3$-$2$ Pachner move can be applied. In this paper we show that any of the so-called poor ideal three-edge triangulations is minimal. We exploit this property to construct minimal i…
We present the census of all non-orientable, closed, connected 3-manifolds admitting a rigid crystallization with at most 30 vertices. In order to obtain the above result, we generate, manipulate and compare, by suitable computer procedures, all rigid non-bipartite crystallizations up to 30 vertices.
Following Matveev, a k-normal surface in a triangulated 3-manifold is a generalization of both normal and (octagonal) almost normal surfaces. Using spines, complexity, and Turaev-Viro invariants of 3-manifolds, we prove the following results: 1) a minimal triangulation of a closed irreducible or a bounded hyperbolic 3-manifold contains no non-trivial k-normal sphere; 2) every triangulation of a closed manifold with at least 2 tetrahedra contains some non-trivial normal surface; 3) every manifold with boundary has only finitely many triangulations without non-trivial normal surfaces. Here, tria…
Let $G$ be a Lie group and $M$ a smooth proper $G$-manifold. Let $pi:Mto M/G$ denote the natural map to the orbit space. Then there exist a PL manifold $P$, a polyhedron $L$ and homeomorphisms $tau:Pto M$ and $σ:M/Gto L$ such that $σ\circpi\circτ$ is PL. If $M$ and the $G$-action are of analytic class, we can choose subanalytic $τ$ and then unique $P$ and $L$.
Starting with an ideal triangulation of the interior of a compact 3-manifold M with boundary, no component of which is a 2-sphere, we provide a construction, called an inflation of the ideal triangulation, to obtain a strongly related triangulations of M itself. Besides a step-by-step algorithm for such a construction, we provide examples of an inflation of the two-tetrahedra ideal triangulation of the complement of the figure-eight knot in the 3-sphere, giving a minimal triangulation, having ten tetrahedra, of the figure-eight knot exterior. As another example, we provide an inflation of the …
We study complexities of 3-manifolds defined from triangulations, Heegaard splittings, and surgery presentations. We show that these complexities are related by linear inequalities, by presenting explicit geometric constructions. We also show that our linear inequalities are asymptotically optimal. Our results are used in [arXiv:1405.1805] to estimate Cheeger-Gromov $L^2$ $ρ$-invariants in terms of geometric group theoretic and knot theoretic data.
We establish a bijective correspondence between the set T(n) of 3-dimensional triangulations with n tetrahedra and a certain class H(n) of relative handlebodies (i.e. handlebodies with boundary loops, as defined by Johannson) of genus n+1. We show that the manifolds in H(n) are hyperbolic (with geodesic boundary, and cusps corresponding to the loops), have least possible volume, and simplest boundary loops. Mirroring the elements of H(n) in their geodesic boundary we obtain a class D(n) of cusped hyperbolic manifolds, previously considered by D. Thurston and the first named author. We show tha…
It is shown that every non-compact hyperbolic manifold of finite volume has a finite cover admitting a geodesic ideal triangulation. Also, every hyperbolic manifold of finite volume with non-empty, totally geodesic boundary has a finite regular cover which has a geodesic partially truncated triangulation. The proofs use an extension of a result due to Long and Niblo concerning the separability of peripheral subgroups.
We investigate the combinatorial analogues, in the context of normal surfaces, of taut and transversely measured (codimension 1) foliations of 3-manifolds. We establish that the existence of certain combinatorial structures, a priori weaker than the existence of the corresponding foliation, is sufficient to guarantee that the manifold in question satisfies certain properties, e.g. irreducibility. The finiteness of our combinatorial structures allows us to make our results quantitative in nature and has (coarse) geometrical consequences for the manifold. Furthermore, our techniques give a strai…
A triangulated $d$-manifold $K$, satisfies the inequality $\binom{f_0(K)-d-1}{2}\geq \binom{d+2}{2}β_1(K;\mathbb{Z}_2)$ for $d\geq 3$. The triangulated $d$-manifolds that meet the bound with equality are called {\em tight neighborly}. In this paper, we present tight neighborly triangulations of 4-manifolds on 15 vertices with $\mathbb{Z}_3$ as automorphism group. One such example wasconstructed by Bagchi and Datta in 2011. We show that there are exactly 12 such triangulations up to isomorphism, 10 of which are orientable.
The so-called Mom-structures on hyperbolic cusped 3-manifolds without boundary were introduced by Gabai, Meyerhoff, and Milley, and used by them to identify the smallest closed hyperbolic manifold. In this work we extend the notion of a Mom-structure to include the case of 3-manifolds with non-empty boundary that does not have spherical components. We then describe a certain relation between such generalized Mom-structures, called protoMom-structures, internal on a fixed 3-manifold N, and ideal triangulations of N; in addition, in the case of non-closed hyperbolic manifolds without annular cus…
For a compact, irreducible, $\partial$-irreducible, an-annular bounded 3-manifold $M\ne\mathbb{B}^3$, then any triangulation $\mathcal{T}$ of $M$ can be modified to an ideal triangulation $\mathcal{T}^*$ of $\stackrel{\circ}{M}$. We use the inverse relationship of crushing a triangulation along a normal surface and that of inflating an ideal triangulation to introduce and study boundary-efficient triangulations and end-efficient ideal triangulations. We prove that the topological conditions necessary for a compact 3-manifold $M$ admitting an annular-efficient triangulation are sufficient to mo…
Let N be a topologically finite, orientable 3-manifold with ideal triangulation. We show that if there is a solution to the hyperbolic gluing equations, then all edges in the triangulation are essential. This result is extended to a generalisation of the hyperbolic gluing equations, which enables the construction of hyperbolic cone-manifold structures on N with singular locus contained in the 1-skeleton of the triangulation.
Let M be an oriented compact 3-manifold and let T be a (loose) triangulation of M, with ideal vertices at the components of the boundary of M and possibly internal vertices. We show that any spin structure s on M can be encoded by extra combinatorial structures on T. We then analyze how to change these extra structures on T, and T itself, without changing s, thereby getting a combinatorial realization, in the usual "objects/moves" sense, of the set of all pairs (M,s). Our moves have a local nature, except one, that has a global flavour but is explicitly described anyway. We also provide an alt…
We extend to the context of hyperbolic 3-manifolds with geodesic boundary Thurston's approach to hyperbolization by means of geometric triangulations. In particular, we introduce moduli for (partially) truncated hyperbolic tetrahedra, and we discuss consistency and completeness equations. Moreover, building on previous work of Ushijima, we extend Weeks' tilt formula algorithm, which computes the Epstein-Penner canonical triangulation, to an algorithm that computes the Kojima triangulation. The theory is particularly interesting in the case of complete finite-volume manifolds with geodesic boun…
Every cusped, finite-volume hyperbolic three-manifold has a canonical decomposition into ideal polyhedra. We study the canonical decomposition of the hyperbolic manifold obtained by filling some (but not all) of the cusps with solid tori: in a broad range of cases, generic in an appropriate sense, this decomposition can be predicted from that of the unfilled manifold. As an example, we treat all hyperbolic fillings on one cusp of the Whitehead link complement.
This paper introduces even triangulations of n-dimensional pseudo-manifolds and links their combinatorics to the topology of the pseudo-manifolds. This is done via normal hypersurface theory and the study of certain symmetric representation. In dimension 3, necessary and sufficient conditions for the existence of even triangulations having one or two vertices are given. For Haken n-manifolds, an interesting connection between very short hierarchies and even triangulations is observed.
