The size of triangulations supporting a given link (Q1810324)

The main result in this article is the following: Let \(L \in S^3\) be a tame link with bridge number \(b(L)\). Let \({\mathcal T}\) be a triangulation of \(S^3\) with \(n\) tetrahedra such that \(L\) is contained in the 1-skeleton of \({\mathcal T}\). Then \(n> {1\over 14} \sqrt {log_{2} b(L)}\) or equivalently \(b(L)< 2^{196 n^{2}}\). This theorem is a consequence of the following: Let \(I=[0,1]\) and let the 1-skeleton of the triangulation be \({\mathcal T}^1\). Let \(H:S^2 \times I \rightarrow S^3\) be an embedding so that \({\mathcal T}^1 \subset H(S^2 \times I)\). A point \(x\in {\mathcal T}^1\) is a \textit{critical point} of \(H\) if \(H_{\xi}=H(S^2 \times \xi)\) is not transversal to \({\mathcal T}^1\) in \(x\), for some \(\xi \in I\). \(H\) is a \({\mathcal T}^1\)-\textit{Morse embedding}, if \(H\) is in general position with respect to \({\mathcal T}^1\). Let \(c(H,{\mathcal T}^1)\) be the number of critical points of \(H\). The author proves that there is a \({\mathcal T}^1\)- Morse embedding \(H:S^2 \times I \rightarrow S^3\) such that \({\mathcal T}^1 \subset H(S^2 \times I)\) and \(c(H,{\mathcal T}^1)< 2^{196 n^{2}}\). The main theorem follows from this, due to the following link: For \(L \subset {\mathcal T}^1\) we have \(b(L) \leq {1\over 2}\min_H \{ c(H,{\mathcal T}^1) \}\), where the minimum is taken over all \({\mathcal T}^1\)- Morse embeddings \(H:S^2 \times I \rightarrow S^3\) with \(L\subset H(S^2 \times I)\). The proofs in the article are based on the theory of 2-normal surfaces. It is worth noting that the estimate for \(n\), the number of tetrahedra in the triangulation in terms of the bridge number \(b(L)\), does not rely on additional geometric or combinatorial assumptions about the triangulation \({\mathcal T}\).