Regular genus and gem-complexity of some mapping tori (Q2317584)

A simplicial cell complex \(K\) is a poset isomorphic to the face poset of a simplicial CW-complex \(X\). If the CW-complex \(X\) represents a manifold \(M\) then \(K\) is called a pseudotriangulation of the manifold \(M\). If a pseudotriangulation \(K\) of a \(d\)-dimensional manifold has exactly \(d+1\) \(0\)-simplices then \(K\) determines a graph \(\Gamma = (V, E)\) with an edge coloring \(\gamma : E \to \{0, \dots, d\}\) such that the \(0\)-simplices of \(K\) have one to one correspondence with the colors \(0, \dots, d\) and the facets of \(K\) have one to one correspondence with the vertices of \(\Gamma\). The colored graph \((\Gamma,\gamma)\) is called a crystallization of \(M\). Every PL manifold admits a crystallisation [\textit{M. Pezzana}, Atti Semin. Mat. Fis. Univ. Modena 23, 269--277 (1975; Zbl 0314.57005)]. Minimising the number of vertices over all crystallisations of a PL manifold \(M\) yields an invariant called the \textit{gem-complexity} of \(M\). The regular genus of a crystallisation \((\Gamma,\gamma)\) is defined to be the smallest genus of a surface into which the graph \((\Gamma,\gamma)\) embeds regularly. Minimising the regular genus over all crystallisations of a PL manifold \(M\) yields another invariant called the \textit{regular genus} of \(M\). The regular genus of a PL manifold is a generalisation of the concept of genus into higher dimensions: for orientable surfaces it coincides with the ordinary genus; for orientable 3-manifolds it coincides with the Heegaard genus of the manifold. Moreover, the PL \(4\)-manifolds up to regular genus 5 are fully classified topologically. Let \(M\) be a closed connected manifold. For a homeomorphism \(f:M \to M\), let \(M_f := (M \times [0,1])/\!\!\sim\), where \({(x,0)\sim (f(x),1)}\). Then \(M_f\) is an \(M\)-fiber bundle over \(\mathbb{S}^1\) and is called the \textit{mapping torus} of \(f\). In this article, the author has constructed a mapping torus \(M_f\) with regular genus 6, where \(M = \mathbb{S}^2 \times \mathbb{S}^1\). In particular, the author has constructed a closed connected prime orientable PL \(4\)-manifold which is different from the product \(\mathbb{RP}^3 \times \mathbb{S}^1\) and has regular genus 6. This disproves a conjecture of \textit{F. Spaggiari} [Collect. Math. 50, No. 3, 229--241 (1999; Zbl 1001.57040)] which states that regular genus six characterizes the product \(\mathbb{RP}^3 \times \mathbb{S}^1\) among closed connected prime orientable PL \(4\)-manifolds. Moreover, the author has constructed crystallizations of some mapping tori \(M_f\) which yield upper bounds for gem-complexity and regular genus of a large class of PL manifolds. The author has also shown that the bound for the regular genus is sharp for some mapping tori \(M_f\).