Epstein–Penner Decompositions and Thrice Punctured Spheres in Hyperbolic 3-Manifolds

Let M be a cusped hyperbolic 3-manifold containing an incompressible thrice punctured sphere S. Suppose that M is not the Whitehead link complement. We prove that a certain arc on S is isotopic to an edge of a Euclidean decomposition of M. By using the above result, we relate alternating knot diagrams and the canonical decompositions. Let K be an alternating hyperbolic knot. On a reduced alternating knot diagram of K, if we replace one of the crossings with a large number of half twists, the polar axis of the crossing is isotopic to an edge of the canonical decomposition for the resulting knot.     

On diagrammatic bounds of knot volumes and spectral invariants

In recent years, several families of hyperbolic knots have been shown to have both volume and λ₁ (first eigenvalue of the Laplacian) bounded in terms of the twist number of a diagram, while other families of knots have volume bounded by a generalized twist number. We show that for general knots, neither the twist number nor the generalized twist number of a diagram can provide two-sided bounds on either the volume or λ₁. We do so by studying the geometry of a family of hyperbolic knots that we call double coil knots, and finding two-sided bounds in terms of the knot diagrams on both the volume and on λ₁. We also extend a result of Lackenby to show that a collection of double coil knot complements forms an expanding family iff their volume is bounded.     

Hausdorff Dimension and Limits of Kleinian Groups

In this paper we prove that if M is a compact, hyperbolizable 3-manifold, which is not a handlebody, then the Hausdorff dimension of the limit set is continuous in the strong topology on the space of marked hyperbolic 3-manifolds homotopy equivalent to M. We similarly observe that for any compact hyperbolizable 3-manifold M (including a handlebody), the bottom of the spectrum of the Laplacian gives a continuous function in the strong topology on the space of topologically tame hyperbolic 3-manifolds homotopy equivalent to M. Submitted: January 1998.     

Boundary structure of hyperbolic 3-manifolds admitting toroidal fillings at large distance

We show that if a hyperbolic 3-manifold M has two toroidal Dehn fillings with distance at least 3, then ∂M consists of at most three tori. As a result, we can obtain an optimal estimate for the number of exceptional slopes on hyperbolic 3-manifolds with boundary a union of at least 4 tori. S. Lee was supported by the Korea Research Foundation Grant funded by the Korean Government (MOEHRD, Basic Research Promotion Fund) (KRF-2007-314-C00024). M. Teragaito was supported by Japan Society for the Promotion of Science, Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (C), 19540089.     

Maximal Volume Representations are Fuchsian

We prove a volume-rigidity theorem for Fuchsian representations of fundamental groups of hyperbolic k-manifolds into Isom . Namely, we show that if M is a complete hyperbolic k-manifold with finite volume, then the volume of any representation of π₁(M) into isom , 3 ≤ k ≤ n, is less than the volume of M, and the volume is maximal if and only if the representation is discrete, faithful and ‘k-Fuchsian’ Stefano Francaviglia: Supported by an INdAM and a Marie Curie Intra European fellowship Ben Klaff: Supported by a CIRGET fellowship and by the Chaire de Recherche du Canada en algèbre, combinatoire et informatique mathématique de l’UQAM.     

Complexity of Geometric Three-manifolds

We compute for all orientable irreducible geometric 3-manifolds certain complexity functions that approximate from above Matveev's natural complexity, known to be equal to the minimal number of tetrahedra in a triangulation. We can show that the upper bounds on Matveev's complexity implied by our computations are sharp for thousands of manifolds, and we conjecture they are for infinitely many, including all Seifert manifolds. Our computations and estimates apply to all the Dehn fillings of M 6 ₁ ³ (the complement of the three-component chain-link, conjectured to be the smallest triply cusped hyperbolic manifold), whence to infinitely many among the smallest closed hyperbolic manifolds. Our computations are based on the machinery of the decomposition into ‘bricks’ of irreducible manifolds, developed in a previous paper. As an application of our results we completely describe the geometry of all 3-manifolds of complexity up to 9.     

Non degenerating Dehn fillings on genus two Heegaard splittings of knots′ complements

It is Thurston's result that for a hyperbolic knot K in S~3, almost all Dehn fillings on its complement result in hyperbolic 3-manifolds except some exceptional cases. So almost all produced 3-manifolds have the same geometry. It is known that its complement in S~3, denoted by E(K), admits a Heegaard splitting. Then it is expected that there is a similar result on Heegaard distance for Dehn fillings. In this paper, Dehn fillings on genus two Heegaard splittings are studied. More precisely, we prove that if the distance of a given genus two Heegaard splitting of E(K) is at least 3, then for any two degenerating slopes on ?E(K), there is a universal bound of their distance in the curve complex of ?E(K).     

Geodesic knots in closed hyperbolic 3-manifolds

We consider the existence of simple closed geodesics or “geodesic knots” in finite volume orientable hyperbolic 3-manifolds. Every such manifold contains at least one geodesic knot by results of Adams, Hass and Scott in (Adams et al. Bull. London Math. Soc. 31: 81–86, 1999). In (Kuhlmann Algebr. Geom. Topol. 6: 2151–2162, 2006) we showed that every cusped orientable hyperbolic 3-manifold in fact contains infinitely many geodesic knots. In this paper we consider the closed manifold case, and show that if a closed orientable hyperbolic 3-manifold satisfies certain geometric and arithmetic conditions, then it contains infinitely many geodesic knots. The conditions on the manifold can be checked computationally, and have been verified for many manifolds in the Hodgson-Weeks census of closed hyperbolic 3-manifolds. Our proof is constructive, and the infinite family of geodesic knots spiral around a short simple closed geodesic in the manifold.      

Covering homotopy 3-spheres

We prove the following theorem: for any closed orientable 3-manifoldM and any homotopy 3-sphere Σ, there exists a simple 3-fold branched coveringp:M→Σ. We also propose the conjecture that, for any primitive branched coveringp:M→N between orientable 3-manifolds,g(M)≥g(N), whereg denotes the Heegaard genus. By the above mentioned result, the genus 0 case of such conjecture is equivalent to the Poincaré conjecture.     

$ L^2 $-torsion of Hyperbolic Manifolds of Finite Volume

Suppose is a compact connected odd-dimensional manifold with boundary, whose interior M comes with a complete hyperbolic metric of finite volume. We will show that the -topological torsion of and the -analytic torsion of the Riemannian manifold M are equal. In particular, the -topological torsion of is proportional to the hyperbolic volume of M, with a constant of proportionality which depends only on the dimension and which is known to be nonzero in odd dimensions [HS]. In dimension 3 this proves the conjecture [Lü2, Conjecture 2.3] or [LLü, Conjecture 7.7] which gives a complete calculation of the -topological torsion of compact -acyclic 3-manifolds which admit a geometric JSJT-decomposition.?In an appendix we give a counterexample to an extension of the Cheeger-Müller theorem to manifolds with boundary: if the metric is not a product near the boundary, in general analytic and topological torsion are not equal, even if the Euler characteristic of the boundary vanishes. Submitted: March 1998, revised: July 1998.     

Margulis numbers for Haken manifolds

For every closed orientable hyperbolic Haken 3-manifold and, more generally, for any orientable hyperbolic 3-manifold M which is homeomorphic to the interior of a Haken manifold, the number 0.286 is a Margulis number. If H ₁(M;ℚ) ≠ 0, or if M is closed and contains a semi-fiber, then 0.292 is a Margulis number for M.     

An algorithm producing a standard spine of a 3-manifold presented by surgery along a link

We provide a simple algorithm which produces a (branched) standard spine of a 3-manifold presented by surgery along a framed link inS ³, giving an explicit upper bound on the complexity of the spine in terms of the complexity of a diagram of the link. As a corollary, we get an easy constructive proof of Casler’s result on the existence of a standard spine for a closed 3-manifold. We also describe an o-graph which represents the spine.     

Admissible transverse surgery does not preserve tightness

We produce the first examples of closed, tight contact 3-manifolds which become overtwisted after performing admissible transverse surgeries. Along the way, we clarify the relationship between admissible transverse surgery and Legendrian surgery. We use this clarification to study a new invariant of transverse knots—namely, the range of slopes on which admissible transverse surgery preserves tightness—and to provide some new examples of knot types which are not uniformly thick. Our examples also illuminate several interesting new phenomena, including the existence of hyperbolic, universally tight contact 3-manifolds whose Heegaard Floer contact invariants vanish (and which are not weakly fillable); and the existence of open books with arbitrarily high fractional Dehn twist coefficients whose compatible contact structures are not deformations of co-orientable taut foliations.     

Length and Stable Length

This paper establishes the existence of a gap for the stable length spectrum on a hyperbolic manifold. If M is a hyperbolic n-manifold, for every positive ϵ there is a positive δ depending only on n and on ϵ such that an element of π₁(M) with stable commutator length less than δ is represented by a geodesic with length less than ϵ. Moreover, for any such M, the first accumulation point for stable commutator length on conjugacy classes is at least 1/12. Conversely, “most” short geodesics in hyperbolic 3-manifolds have arbitrarily small stable commutator length. Thus stable commutator length is typically good at detecting the thick-thin decomposition of M, and 1/12 can be thought of as a kind of homological Margulis constant. Received: June 2006 Revision: May 2007 Accepted: June 2007     

The Chern-Simons Invariants of Hyperbolic Manifolds Via Covering Spaces

One important invariant of a closed Riemannian 3-manifold isthe Chern–Simons invariant [1]. The concept was generalizedto hyperbolic 3-manifolds with cusps in [11], and to geometric(spherical, euclidean or hyperbolic) 3-orbifolds, as particularcases of geometric cone-manifolds, in [7]. In this paper, westudy the behaviour of this generalized invariant under changeof orientation, and we give a method to compute it for hyperbolic3-manifolds using virtually regular coverings [10]. We confineourselves to virtually regular coverings because a coveringof a geometric orbifold is a geometric manifold if and onlyif the covering is a virtually regular covering of the underlyingspace of the orbifold, branched over the singular locus. Thereforeour work is the most general for the applications in mind; namely,computing volumes and Chern–Simons invariants of hyperbolicmanifolds, using the computations for cone-manifolds for whicha convenient Schläfli formula holds (see [7]). Among otherresults, we prove that every hyperbolic manifold obtained asa virtually regular covering of a figure-eight knot hyperbolicorbifold has rational Chern–Simons invariant. We giveexplicit examples with computations of volumes and Chern–Simonsinvariants for some hyperbolic 3-manifolds, to show the efficiencyof our method. We also give examples of different hyperbolicmanifolds with the same volume, whose Chern–Simons invariants(mod ) differ by a rational number, as well as pairs of differenthyperbolic manifolds with the same volume and the same Chern–Simonsinvariant (mod ). (Examples of this type were also obtainedin [12] and [9], but using mutation and surgery techniques,respectively, instead of coverings as we do here.) 1991 MathematicsSubject Classification 57M50, 51M10, 51M25.     

Length Bounds on Curves Arising from Tight Geodesics

Let M be a complete hyperbolic 3-manifold admitting a homotopy equivalence to a compact surface ∑, such that the cusps of M are in bijective correspondence with the boundary components of ∑. Suppose we realise a tight geodesic in the curve complex as a sequence of closed geodesics M. There is an upper bound on the lengths of such curves in terms of the lengths of the terminal curves and the topologicial type of ∑. We give proofs of these and related bounds. Similar bounds have been proven by Minsky using the sophisticated machinery of hierarchies. Such bounds feature in the work of Brock, Canary and Minsky towards the ending lamination conjecture, and can also be used to study the action of the mapping class group on the curve complex. Received: January 2006, Revision: March 2007, Accepted: July 2007     

The topological structure of 3-pseudomanifolds

A 3-pseudomanifold (briefly 3-pm) is a finite connected simplicial 3-complex in which the link of every vertex is a closed 2-manifold. Such a link issingular if it is not a sphere. It is proved that for a preassigned list Σ of closed 2-manifolds (other than spheres), there is a 3-pm in which the list of singular links is precisely Σ, iff the number of the non-orientable members in Σ with odd genus is even. Close relationship is found between 3-pms and 3-manifolds with boundary. This yields a simple proof for the 2-dimensional case of Pontrjagin-Thom’s theorem (i.e., necessary and sufficient condition for a 2-manifold to bound a 3-manifold). The concept of a 3-pm is generalized to higher dimensions.     

Peripheral fillings of relatively hyperbolic groups

In this paper a group theoretic version of Dehn surgery is studied. Starting with an arbitrary relatively hyperbolic group G we define a peripheral filling procedure, which produces quotients of G by imitating the effect of the Dehn filling of a complete finite volume hyperbolic 3-manifold M on the fundamental group π₁(M). The main result of the paper is an algebraic counterpart of Thurston’s hyperbolic Dehn surgery theorem. We also show that peripheral subgroups of G ‘almost’ have the Congruence Extension Property and the group G is approximated (in an algebraic sense) by its quotients obtained by peripheral fillings. Mathematics Subject Classification (2000) 20F65, 20F67, 20F06, 57M27, 20E26     

The G2 sphere of a 4-manifold

We bring to light a G ₂ structure existing on the unit sphere tangent bundle S _M of any given orientable Riemannian 4-manifold M. The associated 3-form φ is co-calibrated if, and only if, M is an Einstein manifold—a result which leads to new examples of co-calibrated G ₂ spaces. We hope to be contributing both to the knowledge of special geometries and to the study of 4-manifolds.     

Realizing Alexander polynomials by hyperbolic links

We realize a given (monic) Alexander polynomial by a (fibered) hyperbolic arborescent knot and link having any number of components, and by infinitely many such links having at least 4 components. As a consequence, a Mahler measure minimizing polynomial, if it exists, is realized as the Alexander polynomial of a fibered hyperbolic link of at least 2 components. For a given polynomial, we also give an upper bound for the minimal hyperbolic volume of knots/links realizing the polynomial and, in the opposite direction, construct knots of arbitrarily large volume, which are arborescent, or have given free genus at least 2.