Structures of full Haken manifolds (Q1116119)

By a theorem of Haken a closed 3-manifold of Heegaard genus g is decomposed by 2-spheres into at most g prime factors. The main theorems of this paper are analogues of this result for decompositions by tori. Let M be a Haken manifold (i.e. a sufficiently large, compact, irreducible, orientable 3-manifold). M contains a unique (up to isotopy) maximal Seifert fiber space N such that \(\partial N\) is a system of mutually nonparallel and nonboundary parallel tori in M. The splitting of M by these tori is called the torus decomposition of M. The author shows the following: if a Haken manifold with empty or toral boundary admits a Heegaard splitting of genus \(g\geq 2\), then the torus decomposition splits M into at most 3g-3 components. If M is decomposed into exactly 3g-3 components \(M_ 1,...,M_{3g-3}\), then each component is simple; g-1 components, say \(M_ 1,...,M_{g-1}\) are exteriors of 2-bridge links and \(M_ g,...,M_{3g-3}\) are Seifert fiber spaces. If \(M_ i\) meets \(M_ j\) for \(i<g\), then \(j\geq g\) and \(M_ j\) admits a Seifert fibration such that a fiber of \(\partial M_ j\) is a meridian of \(\partial M_ i\).