Detecting incompressibility of boundary in 3-manifolds (Q1406012)

If a compact orientable \(3\)-manifold \(M\) has as a boundary a set of tori then the complement of an open regular neighborhood of an unknotting tunnel system is a handlebody \(W\). Determining whether a set of disjoint properly embedded arcs in \(M\) is an unknotting tunnel system is generally difficult. The author relates the problem to a study of the double \(DW\) of \(W\) along a subsurface in \(\partial W\). A typical example is the following Theorem: Let \(W\) be a \(3\)-manifold with compressible boundary and let \(F\) be the surface in \(\partial W\) obtained by deleting the interior of a regular neighborhood of a system of disjoint essential curves on \(\partial W\). If the double \(DW\) of \(W\) along \(F\) is hyperbolic then there exists a longitude curve of length less than \(4\) in the boundary of some cusp in any set of cusps of \(DW\) with disjoint interiors. The author gives applications to determine whether an arc in a knot or link space is an unknotting tunnel.