arXiv research

Critical surfaces are defined by Bachman as topological index 2 surfaces, generalizing incompressible surfaces and strongly irreducible surfaces. In this paper we give a condition to obtain critical Heegaard surfaces by amalgamation. As a special case, we obtain critical Heegaard surfaces by boundary stabilization. It …

It is known that there are surface bundles of arbitrarily high genus which have genus two Heegaard splittings. The simplest examples are Seifert fibered spaces with the sphere as a base space, three exceptional fibers and which allow horizontal surfaces. We characterize the monodromy maps of all surface bundles with ge…

Reduces weak reducing pairs to spheres in 3-sphere Heegaard surfaces.

Colding and Gabai have given an effective version of Li's theorem that non-Haken hyperbolic 3-manifolds have finitely many irreducible Heegaard splittings. As a corollary of their work, we show that Haken hyperbolic 3-manifolds have a finite collection of strongly irreducible Heegaard surfaces $S_i$ and incompressible …

We show that the standard minimal genus Heegaard splitting of (closed orientable surface)\times S^1 is a critical Heegaard splitting.

We show that sub-surfaces of a Heegaard surface for which the relative Hempel distance of the splitting is sufficiently high have to appear in any Heegaard surface of genus bounded by half that distance.

We study principal curvatures of fibers and Heegaard surfaces smoothly embedded in hyperbolic 3-manifolds. It is well known that a fiber or a Heegaard surface in a hyperbolic 3-manifold cannot have principal curvatures everywhere less than one in absolute value. We show that given an upper bound on the genus of a minim…

Every surface bundle with genus $g$ fiber has a canonical Heegaard splitting of genus $2g+1$. We classify the mapping class groups of such Heegaard splittings in the case when the surface bundle has a sufficiently complicated monodromy map.

Maps Heegaard Floer homology to Hecke algebras for surfaces.

In this paper, we give infinitely many non-Haken hyperbolic genus three 3-manifolds each of which has a finite cover whose induced Heegaard surface from some genus three Heegaard surface of the base manifold is reducible but can be compressed into an incompressible surface. This result supplements [CG] and extends [MMZ…

Extends Heegaard Floer theory to surfaces of dimension one.

We prove that for generic metrics on a 3-sphere, the minimal surface obtained from the min-max procedure of Simon-Smith has index 1. We prove an analogous result for minimal surfaces arising from strongly irreducible Heegaard sweepouts in 3-manifolds. We also confirm a conjecture of Pitts-Rubinstein that a strongly irr…

We expect manifolds obtained by Dehn filling to inherit properties from the knot manifold. To what extent does that hold true for the Heegaard structure? We study four changes to the Heegaard structure that may occur after filling: (1) Heegaard genus decreases, (2) a new Heegaard surface is created, (3) a non-stabilize…

In this paper, by putting a separating incompressible surface in a 3-manifold into Morse position relative to the height function associated to a strongly irreducible Heegaard splitting, we show that an incompressible subsurface of the Heegaard splitting can be found, by decomposing the 3-manifold along the separating …

Kevin Hartshorn showed that if a three-dimensional manifold $M$ admits a Heegaard surface $Σ$ with Hempel distance $d$ then every incompressible surface in $M$ has genus at least $\frac{d}{2}$. Scharlemann-Tomova generalized this, proving that in such a manifold, every other Heegaard surface for $M$ of genus $g' < \fra…

Reduces connectivity problem for genus-4 Heegaard surface in 3-sphere.

We address a special case of the Stabilization Problem for Heegaard splittings, establishing an upper bound on the number of stabilizations required to make a Heegaard splitting of a Haken 3-manifold isotopic to an amalgamation along an essential surface. As a consequence we show that for any positive integer $n$ there…

In this paper we introduce "critical surfaces", which are described via a 1-complex whose definition is reminiscent of the curve complex. Our main result is that if the minimal genus common stabilization of a pair of strongly irreducible Heegaard splittings of a 3-manifold is not critical, then the manifold contains an…

This paper studies properties of weak reducing pairs in critical Heegaard splittings.

New proof of Haken's Lemma and Scharlemann's theorem using thin position.

Study homotopy motions of surfaces in 3-manifolds.

Critical surfaces can be regarded as topological index 2 minimal surfaces which was introduced by David Bachman. In this paper we give a sufficient condition and a necessary condition for self-amalgamated Heegaard surfaces to be critical.

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…

We define a notion of Hempel distance for one-sided Heegaard splittings and show that the existence of alternate surfaces restricts distance for one-sided splittings in a manner similar to Hartshorn's and Scharlemann-Tomova's results for two-sided splittings. We also show that every geometrically compressible one-sided…

We describe a correspondence between Turaev surfaces of link diagrams on $S^2\subset S^3$ and special Heegaard diagrams for $S^3$ adapted to links.

We show that given a partially flat angled ideal triangulation for a 3-manifold $M$ with boundary (as defined by Lackenby), there is an algorithm to produce a list of Heegaard splittings for $M$ such that below a given genus $g$, each isotopy class appears exactly once. In particular, this algorithm determines precisel…

New method simplifies 3-manifold Heegaard genus computation.

We give another proof of a theorem of Scharlemann and Tomova and of a theorem of Hartshorn. The two theorems together say the following. Let M be a compact orientable irreducible 3--manifold and P a Heegaard surface of M. Suppose Q is either an incompressible surface or a strongly irreducible Heegaard surface in M. The…

This paper studies Heegaard splittings of surface bundles via the curve complex of the fibre. The translation distance of the monodromy is the smallest distance it moves any vertex of the curve complex. We prove that the translation distance is bounded above in terms of the genus of any strongly irreducible Heegaard sp…

New signs and gradings enable detailed comparison in Heegaard Floer theory.

The study finds an infinite number of minimal surfaces in 3D spheres.

New perspective on Heegaard splittings using square complexes and combinatorial measurements.

Suppose that a three-manifold M contains infinitely many distinct strongly irreducible Heegaard splittings H + nK, obtained by Haken summing the surface H with n copies of the surface K. We show that K is incompressible. All known examples, of manifolds containing infinitely many irreducible Heegaard splittings, are of…

Topological model created for HOMFLY-PT polynomial from link diagrams.

The article finds equivalence moves for links in specific manifolds using plat closure of braids.

The mapping class group of a Heegaard splitting is the group of automorphisms of the ambient 3-manifold that take the surface onto itself, modulo isotopies that keep the surface on itself. We characterize the mapping classes that restrict to periodic and reducible automorphisms of the surface.

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 …

Haken showed that the Heegaard splittings of reducible 3-manifolds are reducible, that is, a reducing 2-sphere can be found which intersects the Heegaard surface in a single simple closed curve. When the genus of the "interesting" surface increases from zero, more complicated phenomena occur. Kobayashi showed that if a…

We describe for each postive integer $k$ a 3-manifold with Heegaard surfaces of genus $2k$ and $2k-1$ such that any common stabilization of these two surfaces has genus at least $3k-1$. We also show that for every positive $n$, there is a 3-manifold that has $n$ pairwise non-isotopic Heegaard splittings of the same gen…

We show that the disk complex of a genus $g>1$ Heegaard surface for the 3-sphere is homotopy equivalent to a wedge of $(2g-2)$-dimensional spheres. This implies that genus $g>1$ Heegaard surfaces for the 3-sphere are topologically minimal with index $2g-1$.

We show that if the monodromy of an open book decomposition has sufficiently high displacement distance, acting on the loop and arc complex for a page, then it is the unique minimal Euler characteristic open book for the manifold. In particular, we show that such an open book induces the unique (up to isotopy) minimal …

The paper studies Goeritz equivalence in lens spaces, describing actions and obstructions.

We construct simple curves from immersed curves in the setting of handlebodies and Heegaard splittings. We define a measure of complexity we call girth for closed curves in a handlebody. We extend this complexity to Heegaard splittings and pose a conjecture about all Heegaard splittings. We prove a test case of this co…

The study connects knot crossing numbers to surface properties and tunnel numbers.

Let K be a knot embedded in a Heegaard surface S for a closed orientable 3-manifold M. We define K-stable equivalence between pairs (S, K) and (S', K) in M, and we prove that any two pairs are K-stably equivalent in M if they have the same surface slope.

We present a new and shorter proof of Stocking's result that any strongly irreducible Heegaard surface of a closed orientable triangulated 3-manifold is isotopic to an almost normal surface. We also re-prove a result of Jaco and Rubinstein on normal spheres. Both proofs are based on the "reduction" technique introduced…

The paper defines a condition for the finiteness of mapping class groups of Heegaard splittings.

New method shows how to move one Heegaard surface positioning to another.