3-manifolds built from injective handlebodies (Q2409974)

A closed 3-manifold constructed by glueing three \(\pi_1\)-injective handlebodies is said to satisfy the disk-condition. The handlebodies are not required to have same genera. In the paper under review it is shown that all 3-manifolds meeting the disk-condition have infinite fundamental group and are irreducible. Sufficient conditions are given for a manifold to satisfy the disk-condition. The class of manifolds satisfying the disk-condition contains all non-Haken Seifert fibered manifold with infinite \(\pi_1\), but also contains other non-Haken manifolds. A construction of the characteristic variety in such manifolds is given. The authors also describe constructions to obtain manifolds satisfying the disk-condition via Dehn fillings along knots in \(S^3\) and \(n\)-fold cyclic branched covers of knots in \(S^3\). The disk-condition is an extension to handlebodies of conditions for the glueing of three solid tori to produce the analogous manifolds, namely manifolds with infinite fundamental group, non-Haken and Seifert fibered.