Moves for flow-spines and topological invariants of 3-manifolds (Q1210367)

A spine \(P\) for a closed 3-manifold \(M\) is a 2-dimensional polyhedron in \(M\) such that the complement of the regular neighborhood of \(P\) is homeomorphic to the 3-ball. Cutting off a closed 3-manifold \(M\) along its spine \(P\), we get a 3-ball \(B^ 3\) with an identification on its boundary. This is a polyhedral representation of \(M\), which is first considered by M. Dehn in the case of closed surfaces, and introduced by H. Seifert in the 3-dimensional case. A DS-diagram is a polyhedral representation of a special class, which was first introduced in [\textit{H. Ikeda} and \textit{Y. Inoue}, Kobe J. Math. 2, 169-186 (1985; Zbl 0602.57008)]. A spine corresponding to a DS-diagram forms a closed fake surface (cf. [\textit{H. Ikeda}, Topology 10, 9-36 (1971; Zbl 0214.504)] and the paper cited above). A spine which forms a closed fake surface is called a standard or a simple spine. As is pointed out in [\textit{V. G. Turaev} and \textit{O. Y. Viro}, Topology 31, No. 4, 865- 902 (1992; Zbl 0779.57009)], a standard spine is the dual of a singular triangulation. A flow-spine introduced in [the author, Tokyo J. Math. 9, 505-525 (1986; Zbl 0697.57004)] is a standard spine of a more special class, which is generated by a pair of a non-singular flow and its local section. It was shown in [\textit{H. Ikeda}, Kobe J. Math. 3, 103-112 (1986; Zbl 0651.57009)] and the author's paper [loc. cit.] that a DS-diagram for a flow spine has an \(E\)-cycle. An \(E\)-cycle is a cycle of the graph of a DS-diagram which represents a kind of symmetry of a polyhedral representation. A closed 3-manifold admits infinitely many flow-spines. In this paper, we shall give conditions for two flow-spines to represent the same manifold, that is, it will be shown that any two flow-spines of a 3-manifold can be transformed from one to another by a finite sequence of operations of three types which we call ``moves''.