Minimal surfaces and particles in 3-manifolds

We consider 3-dimensional anti-de Sitter manifolds with conical singularities along time-like lines, which is what in the physics literature is known as manifolds with particles. We show that the space of such cone-manifolds is parametrized by the cotangent bundle of Teichmüller space, and that moreover such cone-manifolds have a canonical foliation by space-like surfaces. We extend these results to de Sitter and Minkowski cone-manifolds, as well as to some related “quasifuchsian” hyperbolic manifolds with conical singularities along infinite lines, in this later case under the condition that they contain a minimal surface with principal curvatures less than 1. In the hyperbolic case the space of such cone-manifolds turns out to be parametrized by an open subset in the cotangent bundle of Teichmüller space. For all settings, the symplectic form on the moduli space of 3-manifolds that comes from parameterization by the cotangent bundle of Teichmüller space is the same as the 3-dimensional gravity one. The proofs use minimal (or maximal, or CMC) surfaces, along with some results of Mess on AdS manifolds, which are recovered here in a different way, using differential-geometric methods and a result of Labourie on some mappings between hyperbolic surfaces, that allows an extension to cone-manifolds.      

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.     

Maximum principle at infinity for complete minimal surfaces in flat 3-manifolds

The main result of this paper is the following maximum principle at infinity:Theorem.Let M ₁ and M ₂ be two disjoint properly embedded complete minimal surfaces with nonempty boundaries, that are stable in a complete flat 3-manifold. Then dist(M ₁,M ₂)=min(dist(M ₁,M ₂), dist(M ₂,M ₁)).In case one boundary is empty, e.g. M ₁,then dist(M ₁,M ₂)=dist(M ₂,M ₁).If both boundaries are empty, then M ₁ and M ₂ are flat.     

Algorithms for finding proper essential surfaces in 3-manifolds

In this paper, we present an algorithm which, for a given compact orientable irreducible boundary irreducible 3-manifold M, verifies whether M contains an essential orientable surface (possibly, with boundary), whose genus is at most N. The algorithm is based on Haken’s theory of normal surfaces, and on a trick suggested by Jaco and consisting in estimating the mean length of boundary curves in an unknown essential surface of a given genus in the given manifold.     

On the finiteness of the number of orbits on quasihomogeneous (ℂ*)k × SL 2(ℂ)-manifolds

We obtain an effective criterion for the finiteness of the number of orbits contained in the closure of a given G-orbit for the case of a rational linear action of the group G: = (?*)^k × SL ₂(?) on a finite-dimensional linear space as well as on the projectivization of such a space.     

On the number of triple points of an immersed surface with boundary

Given a generic immersionf:S ¹→S ² of a circle into the sphere, we find the best possible lower estimation for the number of triple points of a generic immersionF: (M, S ¹)→(B ³,S ²) extendingf, whereM is an oriented surface with boundary ∂M=S ¹,B ³ is the 3-dimensional ball with boundaryS ². Supported by the Hungarian National Science and Research Foundation OTKA 2505 Supported by the Hungarian National Science and Research Foundation OTKA T4232 This article was processed by the author using the Springer-Verlag T_EX P Jour1g macro package 1991.     

Boundary slopes of punctured tori in 3-manifolds

Let be an irreducible 3-manifold with a torus boundary component , and suppose that are the boundary slopes on of essential punctured tori in , with their boundaries on . We show that the intersection number of and is at most . Moreover, apart from exactly four explicit manifolds , which contain pairs of essential punctured tori realizing and 6 respectively, we have . It follows immediately that if is atoroidal, while the manifolds obtained by - and -Dehn filling on are toroidal, then , and unless is one of the four examples mentioned above.

Let be the class of 3-manifolds such that is irreducible, atoroidal, and not a Seifert fibre space. By considering spheres, disks and annuli in addition to tori, we prove the following. Suppose that , where has a torus component , and . Let be slopes on such that . Then . The exterior of the Whitehead sister link shows that this bound is best possible.

     

A quadratic bound on the number of boundary slopes of essential surfaces with bounded genus

Let M be an orientable 3-manifold with ∂M a single torus. We show that the number of boundary slopes of immersed essential surfaces with genus at most g is bounded by a quadratic function of g. In the hyperbolic case, this was proved earlier by Hass et al.     

On self-intersections of immersed surfaces

A daisy graph is a union of immersed circles in 3-space which intersect only at the triple points. It is shown that a daisy graph can always be realized as the self-intersection set of an immersed closed surface in 3-space and the surface may be chosen to be orientable if and only if the daisy graph has an even number of edges on each immersed circle.

     

On a free boundary problem and minimal surfaces

From minimal surfaces such as Simons' cone and catenoids, using refined Lyapunov–Schmidt reduction method, we construct new solutions for a free boundary problem whose free boundary has two components. In dimension 8, using variational arguments, we also obtain solutions which are global minimizers of the corresponding energy functional. This shows that the theorem of Valdinoci et al. [41], [42] is optimal.     

Existence of immersed spheres minimizing curvature functionals in compact 3-manifolds

We study curvature functionals for immersed 2-spheres in a compact, three-dimensional Riemannian manifold $M$ . Under the assumption that the sectional curvature $K^M$ is strictly positive, we prove the existence of a smooth immersion $f:{\mathbb {S}}^2 \rightarrow M$ minimizing the $L^2$ integral of the second fundamental form. Assuming instead that $K^M \le 2$ and that there is some point $\overline{x} \in M$ with scalar curvature $R^M(\overline{x}) > 6$ , we obtain a smooth minimizer $f:{\mathbb {S}}^2 \rightarrow M$ for the functional $\int \frac{1}{4}|H|^2+1$ , where $H$ is the mean curvature.     

On K3 surfaces with large complex structure

We discuss a notion of large complex structure for elliptic K3 surfaces with section inspired by the eight-dimensional F-theory/heterotic duality in string theory. This concept is naturally associated with the Type II Mumford partial compactification of the moduli space of periods for these structures. The paper provides an explicit Hodge-theoretic condition for the complex structure of an elliptic K3 surface with section to be large. We also establish certain geometric consequences of this large complex structure condition in terms of the Kodaira types of the singular fibers of the elliptic fibration.     

On the number of cusps on cuspidal curves on Hirzebruch surfaces

In this article we give an upper bound for the number of cusps on a cuspidal curve on a Hirzebruch surface. We adapt the results that have been found for a similar question asked for cuspidal curves on the projective plane, and restate the results in this new setting.     

Pre-Bloch invariants of 3-manifolds with boundary

Let M be an oriented hyperbolic 3-manifold with finite volume. In [W.D. Neumann, J. Yang, Bloch invariants of hyperbolic 3-manifolds, Duke Math. J. 96 (1999) 29-59. [9]], Neumann and Yang defined an element β(M) of Bloch group B(C) for M. For this β(M), volume and Chern-Simons invariant of M is represented by a transcendental function. In this paper, we define β(M,ρ,C,o)∈P(C) for an oriented 3-manifold M with boundary, a representation of its fundamental group , a pants decomposition C of ∂M and an orientation o on simple closed curves of C. Unlike in the case of finite volume, we construct an element of pre-Bloch group P(C), and we need essentially the pants decomposition on the boundary. The volume makes sense for β(M,ρ,C,o) and we can describe the variation of volume on the deformation space.     

K3 surfaces with Picard number three and canonical vector heights

In this paper we construct the first known explicit family of K3 surfaces defined over the rationals that are proved to have geometric Picard number . This family is dense in one of the components of the moduli space of all polarized K3 surfaces with Picard number at least . We also use an example from this family to fill a gap in an earlier paper by the first author. In that paper, an argument for the nonexistence of canonical vector heights on K3 surfaces of Picard number was given, based on an explicit surface that was not proved to have Picard number . We redo the computations for one of our surfaces and come to the same conclusion.