Dehn fillings that reduce Thurston norm (Q750957)

A Dehn filling \(M_{\phi}\) of a 3-manifold M is norm reducing if there is an element \(\alpha \in H_ 2M\) with \(| \alpha | <| \phi \alpha |\). Here \(|.|\) denotes the Thurston norm on \(H_ 2M\) and \(\phi\) denotes the natural homomorphism of the second homology groups induced by the injection \(M\to M_{\phi}\). In this paper an example of a 3-manifold is given which has more than one norm reducing Dehn filling. On the other hand it is known that, for a given \(\alpha \in H_ 2M\), there is at most one Dehn filling with \(| \alpha | <| \phi \alpha |\) [\textit{D. Gabai}, J. Differ. Geom. 26, 461-478 (1987; Zbl 0627.57012)]. Using this result the author verifies that the total number of norm reducing Dehn fillings of a 3-manifold M has to be limited by the number of faces of the unit ball in \(H_ 2M\) in the Thurston norm.