Heegaard splittings of exteriors of two bridge knots (Q1601282)

In this work, Heegaard splittings of compact manifolds with boundary are studied. For example, for the complement to a regular neighbourhood of a non-trivial two bridges knot, the properties of Heegaard splittings are presented. First of all, compression body in a manifold with boundary (as an analogue of handlebody) is defined. The handlebody is the compression body with empty essential part of its boundary. By definition, a compression body \(C\) is a 3-dimensional manifold with an embeded compact 2-dimensional surface \(F\) and \(C\) is obtained from \(F\times I\) by attaching to \(F\times \{1\}\) 2-handles along a collection of mutually disjoined closed curves and by adding 3-handles for closing of the obtained boundary 2-spheres. The properties of the Heegaard splitings , that are analogues of the ordinary Heegaard splittings, for a spliting in two compression bodies of a manifolds with boudary are proved. Defined are reducible (there exists a meridian disk) and non-reducible compression bodies and splittings (reducible =there exist two disjoint meridian disks for each component of the splitting) and stabilized splittings. Main concrete result is the following theorem: Let \(K\) be a non-trivial two bridge knot. 1.Then, for each \(g\geq 3,\) every genus \(g\) Heegaard splitting of exterior \(E(K)\) of \(K\) is reducible. 2. For each \(g\geq 3,\) every genus \(g\) Heegaard spliting exterior of \(K\) is stabilized.