arXiv research

Unique incompressible surface in fibered 3-manifolds.

We show that a knot in $S^3$ with an infinite number of distinct incompressible Seifert surfaces contains a closed incompressible surface in its complement.

Standardizes surfaces in 3D handlebodies using Morse theory.

In this paper, we study on knots and closed incompressible surfaces in the 3-sphere via Morse functions. We show that both of knots and closed incompressible surfaces can be isotoped into a "related Morse position" simultaneously. As an application, we have following results. *Smallness of Montesinos tangles with lengt…

Culler and Shalen, and later Yoshida, give ways to construct incompressible surfaces in 3-manifolds from ideal points of the character and deformation varieties, respectively. We work in the case of hyperbolic punctured torus bundles, for which the incompressible surfaces were classified by Floyd and Hatcher. We conver…

Let $\F$ be a compact surface and let $I$ be the unit interval. This paper gives a standard form for all 2-sided incompressible surfaces in the 3-manifold $\F \times I$. Since $\F \times I$ is a handlebody when $\F$ has boundary, this standard form applies to incompressible surfaces in a handlebody.

We classify incompressible, boundary-incompressible, nonorientable surfaces in punctured-torus bundles over $S^1$. We use the ideas of Floyd, Hatcher, and Thurston. The main tool is to put our surface in the "Morse position" with respect to the projection of the bundle into the basis S^1.

We show that any closed incompressible surface in the complement of a positive knot is algebraically non-split from the knot, positive knots cannot bound non-free incompressible Seifert surfaces and that the splitability and the primeness of positive knots and links can be seen from their positive diagrams.

New examples show no upper bounds on link volumes on incompressible surfaces.

When a Dehn filled link manifold contains a geometrically incompressible one-sided surface, it is shown there is a unique boundary incompressible position that the surface can take in the link space. The proof uses a version of the sweep-out technique from two-sided Heegaard splitting theory. When applied to one-sided …

The paper extends monodromy theory to incompressible surfaces in 3-manifolds and applies it to link primeness.

Study handles in sutured manifolds and knots, finding varied handle numbers and unique surfaces.

Cooper-Manning and Louder gave examples of maps of surface groups to PSL(2,C) which are not injective, but are incompressible (i.e. no simple loop is in the kernel). We construct more examples with very simple certificates for their incompressibility arising from the theory of stable commutator length.

In this paper, we give an algorithm to build all compact orientable atoroidal Haken 3-manifolds with tori boundary or closed orientable Haken 3-manifolds, so that in both cases, there are embedded closed orientable separating incompressible surfaces which are not tori. Next, such incompressible surfaces are related to …

We give a description of all (1,2)-knots in S^3 which admit a closed meridionally incompressible surface of genus 2 in their complement. That is, we give several constructions of (1,2)-knots having a meridionally incompressible surface of genus 2, and then show that any such surface for a (1,2)-knot must come from one …

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 …

We study the existence of incompressible embeddings of surfaces into the genus two handlebody. We show that for every compact surface with boundary, orientable or not, there is an incompressible embedding of the surface into the genus two handlebody. In the orientable case the embedding can be either separating or non-…

We show that if $F$ is a smooth, closed, orientable surface embedded in a closed, orientable 3-manifold $M$ such that for each Riemannian metric $g$ on $M$, $F$ is isotopic to a least-area surface $F(g)$, then $F$ is incompressible.

The study develops a word mechanism for knot and link diagrams.

A combinatorial condition is obtained for when immersed or embedded incompressible surfaces in compact 3-manifolds with tori boundary components remain incompressible after Dehn surgery. A combinatorial characterisation of hierarchies is described. A new proof is given of the topological rigidity theorem of Hass and Sc…

In this paper, we characterize closed incompressible surfaces of genus two in the complements of 3-bridge knots and links. This characterization includes that of essential 2-string tangle decompositions for 3-bridge knots and links.

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 mini…

Let $F$ be an incompressible, meridionally incompressible and not boundary-parallel surface with boundary in the complement of an algebraic tangle $(B,T)$. Then $F$ separates the strings of $T$ in $B$ and the boundary slope of $F$ is uniquely determined by $(B,T)$ and hence we can define the slope of the algebraic tang…

In the closed, non-Haken, hyperbolic class of examples generated by (2p,q) Dehn fillings of Figure 8 knot space, the geometrically incompressible one-sided surfaces are identified by the filling ratio p/q and determined to be unique in all cases. When applied to one-sided Heegaard splittings, this can be used to classi…

Let $M$ be a quasi-Fuchsian three-manifold that contains a closed incompressible surface with principal curvatures within the range of the unit interval, for a prescribed function $H$ (with mild conditions) on $M$, we construct a closed incompressible surface with mean curvature $H$ . A direct application is the existe…

One can embed arbitrarily many disjoint, non-parallel, non-boundary parallel, incompressible surfaces in any three manifold with at least one boundary component of genus two or greater [4]. This paper proves the contrasting, but not contradictory result that although one can sometimes embed arbitrarily many surfaces in…

Suppose M is a cusped finite-volume hyperbolic 3-manifold and T is an ideal triangulation of M with essential edges. We show that any incompressible surface S in M that is not a virtual fiber can be isotoped into spunnormal form in T . The proof is based directly on ideas of W. Thurston.

We show that for certain hyperbolic 3-manifolds, all boundary slopes are slopes of immersed incompressible surfaces, covered by incompressible embeddings in some finite cover. The manifolds include hyperbolic punctured torus bundles and hyperbolic two-bridge knots.

Various structural properties are developed for non-orientable surfaces in link spaces. The Möbius band tree is described to represent genus growth of one-sided surfaces in solid tori. The structure of the Tree allows various insights into the change of genus under boundary slope, which are not possible using the exist…

New framework for analyzing line fields on surfaces, proving stability under specific conditions.

We investigate the maximal solid tubes around short simple geodesics in hyperbolic three-manifolds and how complex length of curves relate to closed, incompressible, least area minimal surfaces. As applications, we prove, there are some closed hyperbolic three-manifolds fibering over the circle which are not foliated b…

For a genus g handlebody H a simplicial complex, with vertices being isotopy classes of certain incompressible surfaces in H, is constructed and several properties are established. In particular, this complex naturally contains, as a subcomplex, the complex of curves of the boundary surface of H. As in the classical th…

The Slope Conjecture relates the degree of the colored Jones polynomial of a knot to boundary slopes of incompressible surfaces. Our aim is to prove the Slope Conjecture for Montesinos knots, and to match parameters of a state-formula for the colored Jones polynomial of such knots with the parameters that describe thei…

New research finds infinitely many hyperbolic knots not almost-fibered.

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…

We show that a 3-manifold containing an incompressible surface has topologically minimal surfaces of arbitrary high genus.

For a submanifold M in a Euclidean space, the tangential component x^T of the position vector field x of M is the most natural vector field tangent to the Euclidean submanifold, called the canonical vector field of M. In this article, first we prove that the canonical vector field of every Euclidean submanifold is alwa…

We prove that if $L$ is a non-trivial alternating link embedded (without crossings) in a closed surface $F\subset S^3$, then $F$ has a compressing disk whose boundary intersects $L$ in no more than two points. Moreover, whenever the surface is incompressible and $\partial$-incompressible in the link exterior, it can be…

We show that bordered Heegaard Floer homology detects incompressible surfaces and bordered-sutured Floer homology detects partly boundary parallel tangles and bridges, in natural ways. For example, there is a bimodule Lambda so that the tensor product of CFD(Y) and Lambda is Hom-orthogonal to CFD(Y) if and only if the …

An incompressible surface $F$ on the boundary of a compact orientable 3-manifold $M$ is arc-extendible if there is an arc $γ$ on $\partial M -$ Int $F$ such that $F \cup N(γ)$ is incompressible, where $N(γ)$ is a regular neighborhood of $γ$ in $\partial M$. Suppose for simplicity that $M$ is irreducible, and $F$ has n…

We give a simple sufficient condition for a spun-normal surface in an ideal triangulation to be incompressible, namely that it is a vertex surface with non-empty boundary which has a quadrilateral in each tetrahedron. While this condition is far from being necessary, it is powerful enough to give two new results: the e…

Suppose a link K in a 3-manifold M is in bridge position with respect to two different bridge surfaces P and Q, both of which are c-weakly incompressible in the complement of K. Then either P and Q can be properly isotoped to intersect in a nonempty collection of curves that are essential (including non-meridional) on …

We study incompressible surfaces constructed by Culler-Shalen theory in the context of twisted Alexander polynomials. For a $1$st cohomology class of a $3$-manifold the coefficients of twisted Alexander polynomials induce regular functions on the $SL_2(\mathbb{C})$-character variety. We prove that if an ideal point giv…

Extends Frohman and Rannard's result to Seifert fiber spaces with singular surfaces.

Let M be an orientable and irreducible 3-manifold whose boundary is an incompressible torus. Suppose that M does not contain any closed nonperipheral embedded incompressible surfaces. We will show in this paper that the immersed surfaces in M with the 4-plane property can realize only finitely many boundary slopes. Mor…

A knot is an a-small knot if its exterior does not contain closed incompressible surfaces disjoint from some incompressible Seifert surface for the knot. Using circular thin position for knots we prove that the handle number is additive under the connected sum of two a-small knots. As a consequence the Morse-Novikov nu…

A complex of incompressible surfaces in a handlebody is constructed so that it contains, as a subcomplex, the complex of curves of the boundary of the handlebody. For genus 2 handlebodies, the group of automorphisms of this complex is used to characterize the mapping class group of the handlebody. In particular, it is …

If M is a manifold with compressible boundary, we analyze essential disks in M, as well as incompressible, but not necessarily boundary incompressible, surfaces in M. We are most interested in the case where M is a handlebody or compression body. The analysis depends on a new normal surface theory. We hope the normal s…