Open, irreducible 3-manifolds which are end 1-movable (Q1090979)

This is a study of the ends of noncompact 3-manifolds. The authors introduce techniques for working with noncompact 3-manifolds and then use them effectively to analyze and classify the ends of noncompact 3- manifolds with compact boundary, which are irreducible at \(\infty\). End description theorem: An orientable, connected, noncompact 3-manifold U is Hawaiian-ended if and only if \(\partial U\) is compact, there exists a connected, compact, nonempty K in U with U-K irreducible, and U is end 1-movable. (Roughly speaking, Hawaiian-ended means that the ends look like the end of \(S^ 3\)-(Hawaiian earrings).) As a corollary, the authors obtain several interesting side results. For example, they show that (1) every open, irreducible, end 1-movable 3- manifold U with \(H_ 1(U)=0\) is homeomorphic to \({\mathbb{R}}^ 3\); (2) whether a covering space \((\tilde X,p)\) of a connected, compact CW complex X is end 1-movable depends only on the group pair \((\pi_ 1X,p_*\pi_ 1\tilde X)\); and (3) a closed, irreducible 3-manifold M is covered by \({\mathbb{R}}^ 3\) if and only if \(\pi_ 1M\) is end 1-movable. The techniques and the key idea of this paper, an end reduction, are based on a paper by \textit{E. M. Brown} and \textit{C. D. Feustel} [Proc. Am. Math. Soc. 94, 173-178 (1985; Zbl 0577.57006)]. The authors have written another paper in which they give their results in full generality [''3- manifolds which are end 1-movable'', preprint].