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, triangulations of bounded manifolds are actually ideal triangulations. We also calculate the number of normal surfaces of nonnegative Euler characteristics which are contained in the conjecturally minimal triangulations of all lens spaces.
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…
We give a short proof of the contractibility of the space of geodesic triangulations with fixed combinatorial type of a convex polygon in the Euclidean plane. Moreover, for any $n>0$, we show that there exists a space of geodesic triangulations of a polygon with a triangulation, whose $n$-th homotopy group is not trivial.
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.
In this paper, we will compute the dimension of the space of spun and ordinary normal surfaces in an ideal triangulation of the interior of a compact 3-manifold with incompressible tori or Klein bottle components. Spun normal surfaces have been described in unpublished work of Thurston. We also define a boundary map from spun normal surface theory to the homology classes of boundary loops of the 3-manifold and prove the boundary map has image of finite index. Spun normal surfaces give a natural way of representing properly embedded and immersed essential surfaces in a 3-manifold with tori and …
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 …
Let $M$ be a closed hyperbolic 3-manifold with a fibered face $σ$ of the unit ball of the Thurston norm on $H_2(M)$. If $M$ satisfies a certain condition related to Agol's veering triangulations, we construct a taut branched surface in $M$ spanning $σ$. This partially answers a 1985 question of Oertel, and extends an earlier partial answer due to Mosher.
We consider triangulations of closed surfaces S with a given set of vertices V; every triangulation can be branched that is enhanced to a Delta-complex. Branched triangulations are considered up to the b-transit equivalence generated by b-flips (i.e. branched diagonal exchanges) and isotopy keeping V point-wise fixed. We extend a well known connectivity result for `naked' triangulations; in particular in the generic case when S has negative Euler-Poincare' characteristic c(S), we show that branched triangulations are equivalent to each other if c(S) is even, while this holds also for odd c(S) …
With the $[0,1,2]$-family of cyclic triangulations we introduce a rich class of vertex-transitive triangulations of surfaces. In particular, there are infinite series of cyclic $q$-equivelar triangulations of orientable and non-orientable surfaces for every $q=3k$, $k\geq 2$, and every $q=3k+1$, $k\geq 3$. Series of cyclic tessellations of surfaces are derived from these triangulated series.
We consider geometric triangulations of surfaces, i.e., triangulations whose edges can be realized by disjoint locally geodesic segments. We prove that the flip graph of geometric triangulations with fixed vertices of a flat torus or a closed hyperbolic surface is connected. We give upper bounds on the number of edge flips that are necessary to transform any geometric triangulation on such a surface into a Delaunay triangulation.
We study the ideal triangulation graph $T(S)$ of a punctured surface $S$ of finite type. We show that if $S$ is not the sphere with at most three punctures or the torus with one puncture, then the natural map from the extended mapping class group of $S$ into the simplicial automorphism group of $T(S)$ is an isomorphism. We also show that under the same conditions on $S$, the graph $T(S)$ equipped with its natural simplicial metric is not Gromov hyperbolic. Thus, from the point of view of Gromov hyperbolicity, the situation of $T(S)$ is different from that of the curve complex of $S$.
A Kauffman bracket on a surface is an invariant for framed links in the thickened surface, satisfying the Kauffman skein relation and multiplicative under superposition. This includes representations of the skein algebra of the surface. We show how an irreducible representation of the skein algebra usually specifies a point of the character variety of homomorphisms from the fundamental group of the surface to PSL_2(C), as well as certain weights associated to the punctures of the surface. Conversely, we sketch a proof of the fact that each point of the character variety, endowed with appropria…
A branched affine structure on a compact topological surface with marked points is a complex affine structure outside the marked points. We give a proof of an unpublished foundational theorem of Veech, stating that any branched affine surface can be decomposed into affine triangles and some annulus-shaped cylinders. Then, we prove that any pair of such decompositions can be connected by a chain of flips. As a first step toward a compactification of the moduli spaces of branched affine structures, we introduce invariant $α$ of a branched affine surface that controls degeneracy of the structure.…
Any hyperbolic surface bundle over the circle gives rise to a continuous surjection from the circle to the sphere, by work of Cannon and Thurston. We prove that the order in which this surjection fills out the sphere is dictated by a natural triangulation of the surface bundle (introduced by Agol) when all singularities of the invariant foliations are at punctures of the fiber.
Given a triangulation of a closed, oriented, irreducible, atoroidal 3-manifold every oriented, incompressible surface may be isotoped into normal position relative to the triangulation. Such a normal oriented surface is then encoded by non-negative integer weights, 14 for each 3-simplex, that describe how many copies of each oriented normal disc type there are. The Euler characteristic and homology class are both linear functions of the weights. There is a convex polytope in the space of weights, defined by linear equations given by the combinatorics of the triangulation, whose image under the…
In this paper we consider the symmetries of triangulable half-dilation structures on the sphere with four singularities. We show that all such surfaces can be produced by a tetrahedral construction. Using this construction, we calculate each such surface's symmetry group in $\operatorname{PSL}(2, \mathbb{R})$ called the Veech group.
In this note we combinatorialise a technique of Novikov. We use this to prove that, in a three-manifold equipped with a taut ideal triangulation, any vertical or normal loop is essential in the fundamental group.
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…
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…
This paper illustrates a computational approach to Culler-Morgan-Shalen theory using ideal triangulations, spun-normal surfaces and tropical geometry. Certain affine algebraic sets associated to the Whitehead link complement as well as their logarithmic limit sets are computed. The projective solution space of spun-normal surface theory is related to the space of incompressible surfaces and to the unit ball of the Thurston norm. It is shown that all boundary curves of the Whitehead link complement are strongly detected by its character variety. The specific results obtained can be used to stud…
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…
A degree-regular triangulation is one in which each vertex has identical degree. Our main result is that any such triangulation of a (possibly non-compact) surface $S$ is geometric, that is, it is combinatorially equivalent to a geodesic triangulation with respect to a constant curvature metric on $S$, and we list the possibilities. A key ingredient of the proof is to show that any two $d$-regular triangulations of the plane for $d> 6 $ are combinatorially equivalent. The proof of this uniqueness result, which is of independent interest, is based on an inductive argument involving some combina…
An ideal triangulation of a singular flat surface is a geodesic triangulation such that its vertex set is equal to the set of singular points of the surface. Using the fact that each pair of points in a surface has a finite number of geodesics having length $\leq L$ connecting them, where $L$ is any positive number, we prove that each singular flat surface has an ideal triangulation provided that the surface has singular points when it has no boundary components, or each of its boundary components has a singular point. Also, we prove that such a surface contains a finite number of geodesics wh…
Any two triangulations of a closed surface with the same number of vertices can be transformed into each other by a sequence of regular flips, provided the number of vertices exceeds a number N depending on the surface. Examples show that in general N is bigger than the minimal number of vertices of a triangulation. The existence of N was known, but no estimate. This paper provides an estimate for N that is linear in the Euler characteristic of the surface.
We investigate a type of distance between triangulations on finite type surfaces where one moves between triangulations by performing simultaneous flips. We consider triangulations up to homeomorphism and our main results are upper bounds on distance between triangulations that only depend on the topology of the surface.
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.
In this paper, we are interested in flat metric structures with conical singularities on surfaces which are obtained by deforming translation surface structures. The moduli space of such flat metric structures can be viewed as some deformation of the moduli space of translation surfaces. Using geodesic triangulations, we define a volume form on this moduli space, and show that, in the well-known cases, this volume form agrees with usual ones, up to a multiplicative constant.
Motivated by recent work on Delaunay triangulations of hyperbolic surfaces, we consider the minimal number of vertices of such triangulations. First, we will show that every hyperbolic surface of genus $g$ has a simplicial Delaunay triangulation with $O(g)$ vertices, where edges are given by distance paths. Then, we will construct a class of hyperbolic surfaces for which the order of this bound is optimal. Finally, to give a general lower bound, we will show that the $Ω(\sqrt{g})$ lower bound for the number of vertices of a simplicial triangulation of a topological surface of genus $g$ is tigh…
We present the mathematical background of a software package that computes triangulations of mapping tori of surface homeomorphisms, suitable for Jeff Weeks's program SnapPea. It consists of two programs. jmt computes triangulations and prints them in a human-readable format. jsnap converts this format into SnapPea's triangulation file format and may be of independent interest because it allows for quick and easy generation of input for SnapPea. As an application, we obtain a new solution to the restricted conjugacy problem in the mapping class group.
In the following article we discuss Delaunay triangulations for a point cloud on an embedded surface in $\mathbb{R}^3$. We give sufficient conditions on the point cloud to show that the diagonal switch algorithm finds an embedded Delaunay triangulation.
We present and apply a method for disproving the existence of polyhedral immersions in $\mathbb{R}^3$ of certain triangulations on non-orientable surfaces. In particular, it is proved that neither of the two vertex-minimal, neighborly 9-vertex triangulations of the non-orientable surface of genus 5 are realizable as immersed polyhedral surfaces in $\mathbb{R}^3$.
Recently, Ian Agol introduced a class of "veering" ideal triangulations for mapping tori of pseudo-Anosov homeomorphisms of surfaces punctured along the singular points. These triangulations have very special combinatorial properties, and Agol asked if these are "geometric", i.e. realised in the complete hyperbolic metric with all tetrahedra positively oriented. This paper describes a computer program Veering, building on the program Trains by Toby Hall, for generating these triangulations starting from a description of the homeomorphism as a product of Dehn twists. Using this we obtain the fi…
This paper gives sharp linear bounds on the genus of a normal surface in a triangulated compact, orientable 3--manifold in terms of the quadrilaterals in its cell decomposition---different bounds arise from varying hypotheses on the surface or triangulation. Two applications of these bounds are given. First, the minimal triangulations of the product of a closed surface and the closed interval are determined. Second, an alternative approach to the realisation problem using normal surface theory is shown to be less powerful than its dual method using subcomplexes of polytopes.
We survey basic properties and bounds for $q$-equivelar and $d$-covered triangulations of closed surfaces. Included in the survey is a list of the known sources for $q$-equivelar and $d$-covered triangulations. We identify all orientable and non-orientable surfaces $M$ of Euler characteristic $0>χ(M)\geq -230$ which admit non-neighborly $q$-equivelar triangulations with equality in the upper bound $q\leq\Bigl\lfloor\tfrac{1}{2}(5+\sqrt{49-24χ(M)})\Bigl\rfloor$. These examples give rise to $d$-covered triangulations with equality in the upper bound $d\leq2\Bigl\lfloor\tfrac{1}{2}(5+\sqrt{49-24χ…
We prove that any two finite-area non-compact hyperbolic Riemann surfaces S and T have finite covers that are arbitrarily close in the normalized Weil-Petersson metric, where we normalize by dividing the square of the metric by the area of the surface. In the case where T is the modular surface this reduces to showing that S has a finite cover with a proper ideal triangulation where most of the shear coordinates are small; we will construct such a cover out of a random collection of immersed ideal triangles in S.
We construct a triangulation of a compactification of the Moduli space of a surface with at least one puncture that is closely related to the Deligne-Mumford compactification. Specifically, there is a surjective map from the compactification we construct to the Deligne-Mumford compactification so that the inverse image of each point is contractible. In particular our compactification is homotopy equivalent to the Deligne-Mumford compactification.
The notion of covering type was recently introduced by Karoubi and Weibel to measure the complexity of a topological space by means of good coverings. When X has the homotopy type of a finite CW-complex, its covering type coincides with the minimum possible number of vertices of a simplicial complex homotopy equivalent to X. In this article we compute the covering type of all closed surfaces. Our results completely settle a problem posed by Karoubi and Weibel, and shed more light on the relationship between the topology of surfaces and the number of vertices of minimal triangulations from a ho…
In this paper we describe a procedure for refining the given triangulation of a 3-manifold that scales the PL-metric according to a given weight function while creating no new normal surfaces. It is known that an incompressible surface $F$ in a triangulated 3-manifold $M$ is isotopic to a normal surface that is of minimal PL-area in the isotopy class of $F$. Using the above scaling refinement we prove the converse. If $F$ is a surface in a closed 3-manifold $M$ such that for any triangulation $τ$ of $M$, $F$ is isotopic to a $τ$-normal surface $F(τ)$ that is of minimal PL-area in its isotopy c…
If a (cusped) surface S admits an ideal triangulation T with no shears, we show an efficient algorithm to give S as a quotient of hypebolic plane by a subgroup of PSL(2, Z). The algorithm runs in time O(n log n), where n is the number of triangles in the triangulation T. The algorithm generalizes to producing fundamental groups of general surfaces and geometric manifolds of higher dimension.
A zigzag in a map (a $2$-cell embedding of a connected graph in a connected closed $2$-dimensional surface) is a cyclic sequence of edges satisfying the following conditions: 1) any two consecutive edges lie on the same face and have a common vertex, 2) for any three consecutive edges the first and the third edges are disjoint and the face containing the first and the second edges is distinct from the face which contains the second and the third. A map is $z$-knotted if it contains a single zigzag. Such maps are closely connected to Gauss code problem and have nice homological properties. We s…
A triangulation of a punctured or pinched surface is irreducible if no edge can be shrunk without producing multiple edges or changing the topological type of the surface. The finiteness of the set of (non-isomorphic) irreducible triangulations of any punctured surface is established. Complete lists of irreducible triangulations are determined for the Möbius band (6 in number) and the pinched torus (2 in number). All the non-isomorphic combinatorial types (20 in number) of triangulations of the projective plane with up to 8 vertices are determined.
The Bolza surface can be seen as the quotient of the hyperbolic plane, represented by the Poincaré disk model, under the action of the group generated by the hyperbolic isometries identifying opposite sides of a regular octagon centered at the origin. We consider generalized Bolza surfaces $\mathbb{M}_g$, where the octagon is replaced by a regular $4g$-gon, leading to a genus $g$ surface. We propose an extension of Bowyer's algorithm to these surfaces. In particular, we compute the value of the systole of $\mathbb{M}_g$. We also propose algorithms computing small sets of points on $\mathbb{M}_…
Normal surface theory is a central tool in algorithmic three-dimensional topology, and the enumeration of vertex normal surfaces is the computational bottleneck in many important algorithms. However, it is not well understood how the number of such surfaces grows in relation to the size of the underlying triangulation. Here we address this problem in both theory and practice. In theory, we tighten the exponential upper bound substantially; furthermore, we construct pathological triangulations that prove an exponential bound to be unavoidable. In practice, we undertake a comprehensive analysis …
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.
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…
A triangulation of a surface is called $q$-equivelar if each of its vertices is incident with exactly $q$ triangles. In 1972 Altshuler had shown that an equivelar triangulation of torus has a Hamiltonian Circuit. Here we present a necessary and sufficient condition for existence of a contractible Hamiltonian Cycle in equivelar triangulation of a surface.
A triangulation of a surface with fixed topological type is called irreducible if no edge can be contracted to a vertex while remaining in the category of simplicial complexes and preserving the topology of the surface. A complete list of combinatorial structures of irreducible triangulations is made by hand for the once-punctured torus, consisting of exactly 297 non-isomorphic triangulations.
Dimofte, Gaiotto and Gukov introduced a powerful invariant, the 3D-index, associated to a suitable ideal triangulation of a 3-manifold with torus boundary components. The 3D-index is a collection of formal power series in $q^{1/2}$ with integer coefficients. Our goal is to explain how the 3D-index is a generating series of normal surfaces associated to the ideal triangulation. This shows a connection of the 3D-index with classical normal surface theory, and fulfills a dream of constructing topological invariants of 3-manifolds using normal surfaces.
The intersection matrix of a simplicial complex has entries equal to the rank of the intersection of its facets. In [1] the authors prove the intersection matrix is enough to determine a triangulation of a surface up to isomorphism. In this work we show the intersection matrix is enough to determine the triangulation of a 3-manifold up to isomorphism.
