Incompressibility and normal minimal surfaces

DOI10.1007/S10711-009-9358-1MaRDI QIDQ735047zbMATH OpenOpenAlexFDO

Authors Tejas Kalelkar

Publication date 14 October 2009

Published in Geometriae Dedicata (Search for Journal in Brave)

Full work available at URL https://arxiv.org/abs/0810.0187

zbMATH Keywords

incompressible surfacesminimal surfacesNormal surfacestriangulations

Mathematics Subject Classification ID

Triangulating manifolds (57Q15) Isotopy in PL-topology (57Q37)

Abstract: In this paper we describe a procedure for refining the given triangulation of a 3-manifold that scales the PL-metric according to a given weight function while creating no new normal surfaces. It is known that an incompressible surface $F$ in a triangulated 3-manifold $M$ is isotopic to a normal surface that is of minimal PL-area in the isotopy class of $F$. Using the above scaling refinement we prove the converse. If $F$ is a surface in a closed 3-manifold $M$ such that for any triangulation $au$ of $M$, $F$ is isotopic to a $au$-normal surface $F(au)$ that is of minimal PL-area in its isotopy class, then we show that $F$ is incompressible.

Review text

A normal surface \(F\) is a surface inside a triangulated 3-manifold \(M\) that intersects each tetrahedron so that each component of intersection is a triangle or a quadrangle. To point out a given triangulation \(\tau\) of \(M\) one says that \(F\) is a \(\tau\)-normal surface in \(M\). Can we preserve ``normality of \(F\) if we subdivide (refine) \(\tau\)? Yes, if we perform starring of tetrahedra (3-simplexes). Note that such a subdivision of \(\tau\) does not change the 2-skeleton of \(\tau\), and this procedure of subdivision can be iterated. Even more, one can give a scaling function \(f:\{\Delta: \Delta \in \tau \} \to\mathbb{Z}\) on the set of tetrahedra and perform the procedure on tetrahedra of \(\tau\) according to \(f\). Denote by \(\tau'\) the obtained triangulation of \(M\). The main result says: Let \(F\) be a a closed surface and no component of \(F\) is a 2-sphere. Then for any scaling function \(f\) it holds: \(F\) is \(\tau\)-normal if and only if \(F\) is \(\tau'\)-normal. The results related to the mentioned procedure of subdivision (refining) are used further to characterize the incompressibility of closed orientable surfaces and the obtained theorem is the following: Let \(F\) be a closed orientable surface in an irreducible orientable closed 3-manifold \(M\). Then \(F\) is incompressible if and only if for every triangulation \(\tau\) of \(M\), \(F\) is isotopic to a \(\tau\)-normal surface \(F(\tau)\) that is of minimal \(PL\)-area.

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Cites work

• scientific article; zbMATH DE number 2103273 (Why is no real title available?)
• Incompressibility and least-area surfaces

Cited in

(11)

• PL minimal surfaces in 3-manifolds
• Limits of incompressible surfaces
• PL equivariant surgery and invariant decompositions of 3-manifolds
• Least weight injective surfaces are fundamental
• Isotopy classes of incompressible surfaces in irreducible 3-manifolds
• Efficient triangulations and boundary slopes
• Incompressibility and least-area surfaces
• Functions on surfaces and incompressible subsurfaces
• Bounds for the genus of a normal surface
• scientific article; zbMATH DE number 1531162 (Why is no real title available?)
• Normal surfaces minimizing weight in a homology class

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