3-manifolds which are unions of three solid tori (Q1097544)

The paper presents a complete list of closed 3-manifolds which may be decomposed as the union of 3 solid tori \(T_ 1\cup T_ 2\cup T_ 3\) such that \(T_ i\cap T_ j\) is a compact (not necessarily connected) subsurface of \(\partial T_ i\) and \(\partial T_ j\) for all \(i\neq j\). The list includes \(S^ 3\), \(S^ 1\times S^ 2\), the twisted product \(S^ 1{\tilde \times}S^ 2\), all lens spaces, all Seifert spaces with at most 3 exceptional fibers, and connected sums of an arbitrary number of copies of \(S^ 1\times S^ 2\), \(S^ 1{\tilde \times}S^ 2\) with either 0,1,2 or 3 lens spaces or with a Seifert space with \(\leq 3\) exceptional fibers. The study is motivated by an analogy with the theory of Heegaard splittings.