Critical Heegaard Surfaces

dc.creatorBachman, David
dc.date2002-01-22
dc.date.accessioned2026-07-07T04:46:01Z
dc.date.available2026-07-07T04:46:01Z
dc.descriptionIn 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 incompressible surface. Conversely, we also show that if a non-Haken 3-manifold admits at most one Heegaard splitting of each genus, then it does not contain a critical Heegaard surface. In the final section we discuss how this work leads to a natural metric on the space of strongly irreducible Heegaard splittings, as well as many new and interesting open questions.
dc.description28 pages, 8 figures, to appear in Transactions of the AMS
dc.identifierhttps://arxiv.org/abs/math/0201203
dc.identifierhttp://arxiv.org/abs/math/0201203
dc.identifierTransactions of the American Mathematical Society 354 (2002), 4015-4042.
dc.identifier.urihttp://salesiana.dossiersoluciones.com/handle/123456789/63170
dc.subjectGeometric Topology
dc.subject57M99
dc.titleCritical Heegaard Surfaces
dc.typetext

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