Computer Recognition of Three-Manifolds
This paper contains the theoretical background for a practical computer program which recognizes certain homeomorphism classes of compact 3-manifolds. The basic idea is to use simplifying moves to manipulate a spine of the 3-manifold, where a spine of \(M\) is a 2-dimensional polyhedron \(P\) in the interior of \(M\) (or in the interior of \(M-\text{(open 3-ball)}\), if \(M\) is closed) such that \(M\) collapses to \(P\). The spines are restricted to have only simple kinds of singularities. In particular, there are certain classes of spines called special and almost special. The complexity of \(M\) is defined to be the smallest \(k\) such that \(M\) has an almost special spine with \(k\) vertices. Complexity is additive for connected sums and boundary connected sums, and does not increase when \(M\) is cut along an incompressible surface. There are only finitely many 3-manifolds of a given complexity. The computer algorithm first constructs a special spine \(P\) for \(M\), then applies a sequence of simplifying moves as long as possible. If the resulting spine is empty, then \(M\) was a graph manifold. (A graph-manifold is a 3-manifold that can be obtained by pasting together copies of \(D^2\times S^1\) and \(N^2\times S^1\), where \(N^2\) is a disc with two holes, using homeomorphisms between boundary components. In particular, these include all Seifert-fibered 3-manifolds and 3-dimensional solvmanifolds.) If the resulting spine is nonempty, then one obtains a decomposition of \(M\) into Seifert-fibered manifolds and unknown pieces. The latter may be tested for hyperbolicity, by comparing with Jeff Weeks' table. Using a program which implements the algorithm, the author proved in previous work that any 3-manifold of complexity at most 8 is a graph-manifold. This is sharp, in that there is a hyperbolic 3-manifold of complexity 9. The paper contains precise definitions, descriptions of the simplifying moves, and discussion of the algorithm. Some conjectures about the moves are given, and also some results about spines of manifolds that contain essential annuli.
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