arXiv research

We define a sutured cobordism category of surfaces with boundary and 3-manifolds with corners. In this category a sutured 3-manifold is regarded as a morphism from the empty surface to itself. In the process we define a new class of geometric objects, called bordered sutured manifolds, that generalize both sutured 3-ma…

The paper detects fiberedness in 3-manifolds and extends a torsion invariant to sutured manifolds.

We show that sutured embedded contact homology is a natural invariant of sutured contact 3-manifolds which can potentially detect some of the topology of the space of contact structures on a 3-manifold with boundary. The appendix, by C. H. Taubes, proves a compactness result for the completion of a sutured contact 3-ma…

Generates sutured manifolds from a surface using surgery.

Quantum invariant constructed for sutured 3-manifolds using Hopf superalgebra.

Attaching a 2-handle to a genus two or greater boundary component of a 3-manifold is a natural generalization of Dehn filling a torus boundary component. We prove that there is an interesting relationship between an essential surface in a sutured 3-manifold, the number of intersections between the boundary of the surfa…

Invariants for 3-manifolds with toral boundaries, related by sutured decompositions.

We define a "sutured topological quantum field theory", motivated by the study of sutured Floer homology of product 3-manifolds, and contact elements. We study a rich algebraic structure of suture elements in sutured TQFT, showing that it corresponds to contact elements in sutured Floer homology. We use this approach t…

Kronheimer and Mrowka defined invariants of balanced sutured manifolds using monopole and instanton Floer homology. Their invariants assign isomorphism classes of modules to balanced sutured manifolds. In this paper, we introduce refinements of these invariants which assign much richer algebraic objects called projecti…

For sutured 3-manifolds M, there is a sutured Thurston norm due to Scharlemann. We show how depth one foliations of M and corresponding fibrations and the usual Thurston norm on the double of M are useful tools for computing this norm. In many examples, the faces of the unit ball of the sutured norm are related to cone…

We survey the interactions between foliations and contact structures in dimension three, with an emphasis on sutured manifolds and invariants of sutured contact manifolds. This paper contains two original results: the fact that a closed orientable irreducible 3-manifold M with nonzero second homol-ogy carries a hyperti…

Using the virtual fibering theorem of Agol we show that a sutured 3-manifold $(M, R_+,R_-,γ)$ is taut if and only if the $\ell^2$-Betti numbers of the pair $(M,R_-)$ are zero. As an application we can characterize Thurston norm minimizing surfaces in a 3-manifold $N$ with empty or toroidal boundary by the vanishing of …

Study Kuperberg invariants for sutured manifolds using Fox calculus and Reidemeister torsion.

For closed 3-manifolds, Heegaard Floer homology is related to the Thurston norm through results due to Ozsváth and Szabó, Ni, and Hedden. For example, given a closed 3-manifold Y, there is a bijection between vertices of the HF^+(Y) polytope carrying the group Z and the faces of the Thurston norm unit ball that corresp…

We define an invariant of contact 3-manifolds with convex boundary using Kronheimer and Mrowka's sutured monopole Floer homology theory (SHM). Our invariant can be viewed as a generalization of Kronheimer and Mrowka's contact invariant for closed contact 3-manifolds and as the monopole Floer analogue of Honda, Kazez, a…

Researchers found the minimum volume of a 3-cusped hyperbolic 3-manifold.

We show that all versions of Heegaard Floer homology, link Floer homology, and sutured Floer homology are natural. That is, they assign concrete groups to each based 3-manifold, based link, and balanced sutured manifold, respectively. Furthermore, we functorially assign isomorphisms to (based) diffeomorphisms, and show…

We describe an invariant of a contact 3-manifold with convex boundary as an element of Juhász's sutured Floer homology. Our invariant generalizes the contact invariant in Heegaard Floer homology in the closed case, due to Ozsváth and Szabó. This version has some clarifications and new figures.

We recently defined invariants of contact 3-manifolds using a version of instanton Floer homology for sutured manifolds. In this paper, we prove that if several contact structures on a 3-manifold are induced by Stein structures on a single 4-manifold with distinct Chern classes modulo torsion then their contact invaria…

We present a new strategy for proving the Ambrose conjecture, a global version of the Cartan local lemma. A linking curve is defined as a curve in the tangent space whose composition with the exponential map is tree formed. This key idea is used to define sutured manifolds. We prove first that any sutured manifold sati…

We show that the bordered-sutured Floer invariant of the complement of a tangle in an arbitrary 3-manifold $Y$, with minimal conditions on the bordered-sutured structure, satisfies an unoriented skein exact triangle. This generalizes a theorem by Manolescu for links in $S^3$. We give a theoretical proof of this result …

We observe that the main theorem in \cite{KMsuture} immediately implies its analogue for closed 3--manifolds.

This paper defines and proves properties of Floer homology for sutured manifolds.

It has been a central open problem in Heegaard Floer theory whether cobordisms of links induce homomorphisms on the associated link Floer homology groups. We provide an affirmative answer by introducing a natural notion of cobordism between sutured manifolds, and showing that such a cobordism induces a map on sutured F…

We show that the sutured Floer homology of a sutured 3-manifold of the form $(D^2 \times S^1, F \times S^1)$ can be expressed as the homology of a string-type complex, generated by certain sets of curves on $(D^2, F)$ and with a differential given by resolving crossings. We also give some generalisations of this isomor…

In 2007 Agol showed that if N is an aspherical compact 3-manifold with empty or toroidal boundary such that its fundamental group is virtually RFRS, then $N$ is virtually fibered. We give a largely self-contained proof of Agol's theorem using complexities of sutured manifolds.

We define sutured Heegaard diagrams for null-homologous knots in 3-manifolds. These diagrams are useful for computing the knot Floer homology at the top filtration level. As an application, we give a formula for the knot Floer homology of a Murasugi sum. Our result echoes Gabai's earlier works. We also show that for so…

3-manifolds foliar if surfaces minimize Thurston norm, leading to taut foliations.

For an oriented irreducible 3-manifold M with non-empty toroidal boundary, we describe how sutured Floer homology ($SFH$) can be used to determine all fibered classes in $H^1(M)$. Furthermore, we show that the $SFH$ of a balanced sutured manifold $(M,γ)$ detects which classes in $H^1(M)$ admit a taut depth one foliatio…

New method calculates Thurston norm for 3-manifolds with toroidal boundaries.

We establish a correspondence between trisections of smooth, compact, oriented $4$--manifolds with connected boundary and diagrams describing these trisected $4$--manifolds. Such a diagram comes in the form of a compact, oriented surface with boundary together with three tuples of simple closed curves, with possibly fe…

For each integer $N\geq 2$, Mariño and Moore defined generalized Donaldson invariants by the methods of quantum field theory, and made predictions about the values of these invariants. Subsequently, Kronheimer gave a rigorous definition of generalized Donaldson invariants using the moduli spaces of anti-self-dual conne…

Proves a formula for instanton Floer homology of knots.

Study shows inequality in Floer homologies for 3-manifold covers.

The paper defines contact invariants in bordered Floer homology.

We study Dehn surgeries on null-homotopic knots that yield fibred $3$--manifolds when an additional (but natural) homological restriction is imposed. The major tool used is Gabai's theory of sutured manifold decomposition. Such surgeries are negative examples to a question of Michel Boileau. Another result we will prov…

New technique connects instanton Floer homology to Heegaard diagrams for knots and 3-manifolds.

Study of instantons and knot representations in 3-manifolds.

New method finds unique branched surfaces in 3-manifolds.

We extend Perutz's Lagrangian matching invariants to 3-manifolds which are not necessarily fibred using the technology of holomorphic quilts. We prove an isomorphism of these invariants with Ozsvath-Szabo's Heegaard Floer invariants for certain extremal spin^c structures. As applications, we give new calculations of He…

The works of Donaldson and Mark make the structure of the Seiberg-Witten invariant of 3-manifolds clear. It corresponds to certain torsion type invariants counting flow lines and closed orbits of a gradient flow of a circle-valued Morse map on a 3-manifold. We study these invariants using the Morse-Novikov theory and H…

We show that if (B,π) is an open book decomposition of a contact 3-manifold (Y,ξ), then the complement of the binding B has no Giroux torsion. We also prove the sutured Heegaard-Floer c-bar invariant of the binding of an open book is non-zero.

We prove that knots obtained by attaching a band to a split link satisfy the cabling conjecture. We also give new proofs that unknotting number one knots are prime and that genus is superadditive under band sum. Additionally, we prove a collection of results comparing two 2-handle additions to a genus two boundary comp…

We use monopole Floer homology for sutured manifolds to construct invariants of Legendrian knots in a contact 3-manifold. These invariants assign to a knot K in Y elements of the monopole knot homology KHM(-Y,K), and they strongly resemble the knot Floer homology invariants of Lisca, Ozsváth, Stipsicz, and Szabó. We pr…

Framework extends sutured manifold invariants to pairs with torus boundaries.

We survey aspects of classical combinatorial sutured manifold theory and show how they can be adapted to study exceptional Dehn fillings and 2-handle additions. As a consequence we show that if a hyperbolic knot $β$ in a compact, orientable, hyperbolic 3-manifold $M$ has the property that winding number and wrapping nu…

Developed a real sutured Heegaard Floer theory.

Sutured instanton homology uses Heegaard diagrams to bound homology dimensions.