Connected sums of knots and weakly reducible Heegaard splittings (Q1878511)

It is known that there is a connection between the existence of closed incompressible surfaces in a compact 3-manifold and the nature of its Heegaard splittings [see for example \textit{A. J. Carson} and \textit{C. McA. Gordon}, Topology Appl. 27, 275--283 (1987; Zbl 0632.57010) and \textit{M. Luzstig} and \textit{Y. Moriah}, Topology Appl. 92, No. 1, 1--13 (1999; Zbl 0924.57003)]. In this paper, the author begins to explore this connection with respect to essential surfaces with boundary and as a first step he studies spaces containing essential annuli. A special case of 3-manifolds which contain essential (i.e., incompressible, non-boundary parallel) annuli are the exterior spaces of the connected sums of knots in the 3-sphere. So the author studies the question of whether minimal genus Heegaard splittings of the exterior spaces of knots which are connected sums are weakly reducible or not. Examples of strongly irreducible minimal genus Heegaard splittings of composite knots are also described. Finally, the author gives a characterization of when a set of primitive annuli on a handlebody is simultaneously primitive. This characterization is different from that given in [\textit{C. McA. Gordon}, Topology Appl. 27, 285--299 (1987; Zbl 0634.57007)].