Algorithmic detection and description of hyperbolic structures on closed 3-manifolds with solvable word problem (Q1865105)

The author proves that there exists an algorithm to decide whether a closed orientable 3-manifold with solvable word problem is hyperbolic or not. According to the author, this was first suggested by Casson. Notice that hyperbolic manifolds have solvable word problem. The algorithm is constructive, in particular it proves that, given a hyperbolic manifold, its hyperbolic structure is algorithmically constructible. The result uses the theorem of Gabai-Meyerhoff-Thurston: a closed irreducible manifold homotopically hyperbolic is hyperbolic. Irreducibility is decided using two algorithms: first Haken's, to find essential spheres, and second Rubinstein-Thompson's, to decide whether they bound a ball or not. The original part of the paper is the algorithm to decide homotopic hyperbolicity for irreducible manifolds. Such a property is equivalent to the existence of a discrete faithful representation of the fundamental group in the isometry group of hyperbolic space. By Weil's local rigidity, to find such a representation one has to look only at isolated points of the variety of characters, which is a finite set. The hard part is to decide discreteness and faithfulness. The main technique for that is to construct an analogue of a Ford domain, which is the candidate to be a fundamental domain, in order to apply Poincaré's theorem.