Pants immersed in hyperbolic 3-manifolds (Q2270613)

\textit{C. C. Adams} [Trans. Am. Math. Soc. 287, 645--656 (1985; Zbl 0527.57002)] showed that if \(M\) is a compact orientable \(3\)-manifold with boundary and hyperbolic interior, then any incompressible thrice-punctured sphere properly embedded in \(M\) is isotopic to an embedded totally geodesic thrice-punctured sphere. A thrice-punctured sphere is also referred to as a (pair of) pants. The main result shows that any essential immersion of a pain of pants to \(M\) is relatively homotopic to an embedding, or \(M\) is obtained from the Whitehead link complement by (possibly empty) Dehn filling on one cusp, and the immersion is homotoped to have a single clasp singularity.