The Heegaard genus of hyperbolic 3-manifolds of small volume (Q1357991)

The authors consider the ordering of hyperbolic 3-manifolds \(M_3\) of finite volume in terms of their volumes. The first eleven of those are given in the literature and are obtained by Dehn surgeries on the components of the Whitehead link. In this paper, the Heegaard genus \(h(M_3)\) which is the minimum of all Heegaard decompositions of \(M_3\) of the above manifolds together with Fibonacci manifolds is investigated. It is shown that for a manifold \(M_3\) obtained by Dehn surgery \(h(M_3)<3\). Then the result is sharpened: \(h(M_3)=2\). Fibonacci manifolds \(M_n\) are also considered and the same Heegaard genus is obtained for \(n>2\). By these results, one can conclude that the famous Hurwitz bound \(84(g-1)\) does not hold, i.e. there are hyperbolic 3-manifolds of Heegaard genus 2 with an arbitrarily large automorphism group.