arXiv research

Two algorithms use normal surfaces to detect unknots and prove knots.

Normal surface theory, a tool to represent surfaces in a triangulated 3-manifold combinatorially, is ubiquitous in computational 3-manifold theory. In this paper, we investigate a relaxed notion of normal surfaces where we remove the quadrilateral conditions. This yields normal surfaces that are no longer embedded. We …

A major breakthrough in the theory of topological algorithms occurred in 1992 when Hyam Rubinstein introduced the idea of an almost normal surface. We explain how almost normal surfaces emerged naturally from the study of geodesics and minimal surfaces. Patterns of stable and unstable geodesics can be used to character…

Unified approach to totally ramified values in various surface theories.

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.…

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 Spun normal surfaces have been described in unpublished work of Thurston.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 fr…

Tollefson described a variant of normal surface theory for 3-manifolds, called Q-theory, where only the quadrilateral coordinates are used. Suppose $M$ is a triangulated, compact, irreducible, boundary-irreducible 3-manifold. In Q-theory, if $M$ contains an essential surface, then the projective solution space has an e…

We define a 2-normal surface to be one which intersects every 3-simplex of a triangulated 3-manifold in normal triangles and quadrilaterals, with one or two exceptions. The possible exceptions are a pair of octagons, a pair of unknotted tubes, an octagon and a tube, or a 12-gon. In this paper we use the theory of criti…

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 serie…

Proves minimum number of normals to curves in 3D space.

Survey on 3-manifold problems and their complexity.

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…

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 minima…

Normal and almost normal surfaces are essential tools for algorithmic 3-manifold topology, but to use them requires exponentially slow enumeration algorithms in a high-dimensional vector space. The quadrilateral coordinates of Tollefson alleviate this problem considerably for normal surfaces, by reducing the dimension …

For a two-dimensional surface in the four-dimensional Euclidean space we introduce an invariant linear map of Weingarten type in the tangent space of the surface, which generates two invariants k and kappa. The condition k = kappa = 0 characterizes the surfaces consisting of flat points. The minimal surfaces are charac…

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…

Paper generalizes Bloch-Ros principle to various surface classes.

In this paper, we use normal surface theory to study Dehn filling on a knot-manifold. First, it is shown that there is a finite computable set of slopes on the boundary of a knot-manifold that bound normal and almost normal surfaces in a one-vertex triangulation of that knot-manifold. This is combined with existence th…

An explicit construction of surfaces with flat normal bundle in the Euclidean space (unit hypersphere) in terms of solutions of certain linear system is proposed. In the case of 3-space our formulae can be viewed as the direct Lie sphere analog of the generalized Weierstrass representation of surfaces in conformal geom…

Computational knot theory and 3-manifold topology have seen significant breakthroughs in recent years, despite the fact that many key algorithms have complexity bounds that are exponential or greater. In this setting, experimentation is essential for understanding the limits of practicality, as well as for gauging the …

We develop an invariant local theory of Lorentz surfaces in pseudo-Euclidean 4-space by use of a linear map of Weingarten type. We find a geometrically determined moving frame field at each point of the surface and obtain a system of geometric functions. We prove a fundamental existence and uniqueness theorem in terms …

Extends Kummer's theory to singular surfaces for line congruences.

The enumeration of normal surfaces is a crucial but very slow operation in algorithmic 3-manifold topology. At the heart of this operation is a polytope vertex enumeration in a high-dimensional space (standard coordinates). Tollefson's Q-theory speeds up this operation by using a much smaller space (quadrilateral coord…

This paper has been withdrawn by the author, due to a significant error in section 4.3.1.

New method simplifies 3-manifold Heegaard genus computation.

We prove that a reduced and irreducible algebraic surface in $\mathbb{CP}^{3}$ containing infinitely many twistor lines cannot have odd degree. Then, exploiting the theory of quaternionic slice regularity and the normalization map of a surface, we give constructive existence results for even degrees.

We present a new, practical algorithm to test whether a knot complement contains a closed essential surface. This property has important theoretical and algorithmic consequences; however, systematically testing it has until now been infeasibly slow, and current techniques only apply to specific families of knots. As a …

Meridian surfaces in the Euclidean 4-space are two-dimensional surfaces which are one-parameter systems of meridians of a standard rotational hypersurface. On the base of our invariant theory of surfaces we study meridian surfaces with special invariants. In the present paper we give the complete classification of Chen…

We exhibit an algorithm to determine the bridge number of a hyperbolic knot in the 3-sphere. The proof uses adaptations of almost normal surface theory for compact surfaces with boundary in ideally triangulated knot exteriors.

In three-dimensional computational topology, the theory of normal surfaces is a tool of great theoretical and practical significance. Although this theory typically leads to exponential time algorithms, very little is known about how these algorithms perform in "typical" scenarios, or how far the best known theoretical…

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-nor…

Theory of symplectic reduction in infinite dimensions developed.

We prove that any strongly regular Weingarten surface in Euclidean space carries locally geometric principal parameters. The basic theorem states that any strongly regular Weingarten surface is determined up to a motion by its structural functions and the normal curvature function satisfying a geometric differential eq…

Study on biconservative surfaces in 4D hyperbolic space, providing extrinsic descriptions.

Let M be the interior of a compact 3-manifold with non-empty boundary, and T be an ideal (topological) triangulation of M. This paper describes necessary and sufficient conditions for the existence of angle structures, semi-angle structures and generalised angle structures on (M; T) respectively in terms of a generalis…

General rotational surfaces as a source of examples of surfaces in the four-dimensional Euclidean space have been introduced by C. Moore. In this paper we consider the analogue of these surfaces in the Minkowski 4-space. On the base of our invariant theory of spacelike surfaces we study general rotational surfaces with…

Bridge trisections and knotted surfaces connected via tri-plane diagrams.

This paper generalizes the definition of a Heegaard splitting to unify Scharlemann and Thomspon's concept of thin position for 3-manifolds, Gabai's thin position for knots, and Rubinstein's almost normal surface theory. This gives generalizations of theorems of Scharlemann, Thompson, Rubinstein, and Stocking. In the fi…

The paper connects least area surfaces to quasi-normal surfaces in 3-manifolds.

In this paper we prove two results, one semi-historical and the other new. The semi-historical result, which goes back to Thurston and Riley, is that the geometrization theorem implies that there is an algorithm for the homeomorphism problem for closed, oriented, triangulated 3-manifolds. We give a self-contained proof…

We consider a special class of spacelike surfaces in the Minkowski 4-space which are one-parameter systems of meridians of the rotational hypersurface with timelike or spacelike axis. We call these surfaces meridian surfaces of elliptic or hyperbolic type, respectively. On the base of our invariant theory of surfaces w…

Paper develops a new method for harmonic maps into symmetric spaces.

We exhibit several transformations of surfaces in R^4. First, one that takes a flat surface and gets a surface with flat normal bundle; then, one that takes a surface with flat normal bundle and gets a flat surface; finally, a one-parameter family of transformations on a flat surface with flat normal bundle and gives a…

We introduce the notion of a ribbon-clasp surface-link, which is a generalization of a ribbon surface-link. We generalize the notion of a normal form on embedded surface-links to the case of immersed surface-links and prove that any (immersed) surface-link can be described in a normal form. It is known that an embedded…

The paper characterizes surfaces in 4D space forms with flat normal connection.

We consider the Laplace normal vector field of relatively normalized ruled surfaces with non-vanishing Gaussian curvature in the three-dimensional Euclidean space $\mathbb{R}^{3}$. We determine all ruled surfaces and all relative normalizations for which the Laplace normal image degenerates into a point or into a curve…

The concept of a normal surface in a triangulated, compact 3-manifold was generalised by Thurston to a spun-normal surface in a non-compact 3-manifold with ideal triangulation. This paper defines a boundary curve map which takes a spun-normal surface to an element of the direct sum of the first homology groups of the v…

In this paper we develop the theory of Willmore sequences for Willmore surfaces in the 4-sphere. We show that under appropriate conditions this sequence has to terminate. In this case the Willmore surface either is the twistor projection of a holomorphic curve into complex projective space or the inversion of a minimal…