A property that characterizes Euler characteristic among invariants of combinatorial manifolds

If a real valued invariant of compact combinatorial manifolds (with or without boundary) depends only on the number of simplices in each dimension in the manifold, then the invariant is completely determined by the Euler characteristic of the manifold and its boundary. So essentially, the Euler characteristic is the unique invariant of this type.     

Incompressible surfaces in handlebodies and boundary reducible 3-manifolds

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-separating. We also consider the case in which the genus two handlebody is replaced by an orientable 3-manifold with a compressible boundary component of genus greater than or equal to two.     

Boundaries of right-angled Coxeter groups with manifold nerves

All abstract reflection groups act geometrically on non-positively curved geodesic spaces. Their natural space at infinity, consisting of (bifurcating) infinite geodesic rays emanating from a fixed base point, is called a boundary of the group.We will present a condition on right-angled Coxeter groups under which they have topologically homogeneous boundaries. The condition is that they have a nerve which is a connected closed orientable PL manifold.In the event that the group is generated by the reflections of one of Davis’ exotic open contractible n-manifolds (n?4), the group will have a boundary which is a homogeneous cohomology manifold. This group boundary can then be used to equivariantly Z-compactify the Davis manifold.If the compactified manifold is doubled along the group boundary, one obtains a sphere if n?5. The system of reflections extends naturally to this sphere and can be augmented by a reflection whose fixed point set is the group boundary. It will be shown that the fixed point set of each extended original reflection on the thus formed sphere is a tame codimension-one sphere.     

On the mapping class group of a genus 2 handlebody

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 shown that all automorphisms of the complex of incompressible surfaces are geometric, that is, induced by a homeomorphism of the handlebody.     

Contact handle decompositions

We review Giroux's contact handles and contact handle attachments in dimension three and show that a bypass attachment consists of a pair of contact 1 and 2-handles. As an application we describe explicit contact handle decompositions of infinitely many pairwise non-isotopic overtwisted 3-spheres. We also give an alternative proof of the fact that every compact contact 3-manifold (closed or with convex boundary) admits a contact handle decomposition, which is a result originally due to Giroux.     

Boundary slopes and the logarithmic limit set

The A-polynomial of a manifold whose boundary consists of a single torus is generalised to an eigenvalue variety of a manifold whose boundary consists of a finite number of tori, and the set of strongly detected boundary curves is determined by Bergman's logarithmic limit set, which describes the exponential behaviour of the eigenvalue variety at infinity. This enables one to read off the detected boundary curves of a multi-cusped manifold in a similar way to the 1-cusped case, where the slopes are encoded in the Newton polygon of the A-polynomial.     

Exceptional Dehn fillings on hyperbolic 3-manifolds with at least two boundary components

We estimate the number of exceptional slopes for hyperbolic 3-manifolds with a torus boundary component and at least one other boundary component.     

A note about bistellar operations on PL-manifolds with boundary

In 1990, U. Pachner proved that simplicial triangulations of the same PL-manifold (with boundary) are always connected by a finite sequence of transformations belonging to two different groups:shelling operations (and their inverses), which work mostly with the boundary triangulations, andbistellar operations, which affect only the interior of the triangulations.The purpose of this note is to prove that, in case of simplicial triangulations coinciding on the boundary, bistellar operations are sufficient to solve the homeomorphism problem.Work performed under the auspicies of the GNSAGA of the CNR (National Research Council of Italy) and financially supported by MURST of Italy (project Geometria Reale e Complessa).     

On dual and triple integral equations involving modified bessel functions

A generalisation of some tripe integral equations occuring in the solution of certain mixed boundary value problems involving the wave equation is investigated. It is found that the solution of the equations can be expressed in terms of the solution of a Fredholm intgral equation of the second kind and that a related pair of dual integral equations can be solved exactly     

A Note on Surfaces Bounding Hyperbolic 3-Manifolds

We consider the problem of whether a given hyperbolic surface occurs as the totally geodesic boundary of a compact hyperbolic 3-manifold (as some or as the only boundary component). We discuss some explicit examples of hyperbolic surfaces, in particular the surface associated to the small stellated dodecahedron (one of the four Kepler-Poinsot polyhedra) which is the boundary of a hyperbolic icosahedral 3-manifold.     

On the splitting problem for manifold pairs with boundaries

The problem of splitting a homotopy equivalence along a submanifold is closely related to the surgery exact sequence and to the problem of surgery of manifold pairs. In classical surgery theory there exist two approaches to surgery in the category of manifolds with boundaries. In the rel ∂ case the surgery on a manifold pair is considered with the given fixed manifold structure on the boundary. In the relative case the surgery on the manifold with boundary is considered without fixing maps on the boundary. Consider a normal map to a manifold pair (Y, ∂Y) ⊂ (X, ∂X) with boundary which is a simple homotopy equivalence on the boundary∂X. This map defines a mixed structure on the manifold with the boundary in the sense of Wall. We introduce and study groups of obstructions to splitting of such mixed structures along submanifold with boundary (Y, ∂Y). We describe relations of these groups to classical surgery and splitting obstruction groups. We also consider several geometric examples.     

A classification of 2-complexes with nontrivial self-covers

The main result is the classification of finite regular 2-complexes which have a nontrivial finite-sheeted self-cover. It is shown that a 2-complex K is a member of this class if and only if it may be decomposed as a collection of annuli and circles in the sense made precise in the paper. Intuitively, K is recovered by gluing the boundary components of the annuli to the circles via covering maps.     

Toroidal and Klein bottle boundary slopes

Let M be a compact, connected, orientable, irreducible 3-manifold and T₀ an incompressible torus boundary component of M such that the pair (M,T₀) is not cabled. By a result of C. Gordon, if (S,∂S),(T,∂T)⊂(M,T₀) are incompressible punctured tori with boundary slopes at distance Δ=Δ(∂S,∂T), then Δ?8, and the cases where Δ=6,7,8 are very few and classified. We give a simplified proof of this result (or rather, of its reduction process), using an improved estimate for the maximum possible number of mutually parallel negative edges in the graphs of intersection of S and T. We also extend Gordon's result by allowing either S or T to be an essential Klein bottle.     

Blowing up boundary conditions for a nonlocal nonlinear diffusion equation in several space dimensions

We analyze boundary value problems prescribing Dirichlet or Neumann boundary conditions for a nonlocal nonlinear diffusion operator which is analogous to the porous medium equation in a bounded smooth domain Ω∈R^N with N≥1. First, we prove existence and uniqueness of solutions and the validity of a comparison principle for these problems. Next, we impose boundary data that blow up in finite time and study the behavior of the solutions.     

Boundary fluxes for nonlocal diffusion

We study a nonlocal diffusion operator in a bounded smooth domain prescribing the flux through the boundary. This problem may be seen as a generalization of the usual Neumann problem for the heat equation. First, we prove existence, uniqueness and a comparison principle. Next, we study the behavior of solutions for some prescribed boundary data including blowing up ones. Finally, we look at a nonlinear flux boundary condition.     

The missing boundary problem for smooth manifolds of dimension greater than or equal to six

Let M be a non-compact differentiable manifold of dimension ?6. Suppose both M and ?M are 1-ended spaces. We give necessary and sufficient conditions for M to be diffeomorphic to the complement of a compact subset of the boundary of a compact manifold. There are four conditions: two geometric conditions and two algebraic obstructions. We give examples to show that these obstructions are not always trivial. In particular, an example of a manifold is constructed which does not have a completion but any tubular neighborhood of codimension ?3 has a completion. We also classify the different ways to complete a given manifold.     

The Thurston boundary of Teichmüller space and complex of curves

Let S be a closed orientable surface with genus g?2. For a sequence σi in the Teichmüller space of S, which converges to a projective measured lamination [λ] in the Thurston boundary, we obtain a relation between λ and the geometric limit of pants decompositions whose lengths are uniformly bounded by a Bers constant L. We also show that this bounded pants decomposition is related to the Gromov boundary of complex of curves.     

Rational structure on algebraic tangles and closed incompressible surfaces in the complements of algebraically alternating knots and links

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 tangle. In addition to the Conway's tangle sum, we define a natural product of two tangles. The slopes and binary operation on algebraic tangles lead to an algebraic structure which is isomorphic to the rational numbers.We introduce a new knot and link class, algebraically alternating knots and links, roughly speaking which are constructed from alternating knots and links by replacing some crossings with algebraic tangles. We give a necessary and sufficient condition for a closed surface to be incompressible and meridionally incompressible in the complement of an algebraically alternating knot or link K. In particular we show that if K is a knot, then the complement of K does not contain such a surface.     

Nevanlinna-Pick interpolation with boundary data

Versions of the Nevanlinna-Pick interpolation problem with boundary interpolation nodes and boundary interpolated values are investigated.     

Amalgamated products and properly 3-realizable groups

In this paper, we show that the class of all properly 3-realizable groups is closed under amalgamated free products (and HNN-extensions) over finite groups. We recall that G is said to be properly 3-realizable if there exists a compact 2-polyhedron K with π₁(K)≅G and whose universal cover has the proper homotopy type of a 3-manifold (with boundary).