Distance of bridge surfaces for links with essential meridional spheres (Q2447185)

The concept of distance for links that are in bridge position with respect to a Heegaard surface is studied in this article. The paper focuses on cases where the \(3\)-manifold in which the link is embedded admits an essential sphere intersecting the link transversely in at least four points. It was previously known [\textit{D. Bachman} and \textit{S. Schleimer}, Pac. J. Math. 219, No. 2, 221--235 (2005; Zbl 1086.57011)] that the distance of a link in bridge position with respect to a Heegaard surface is bounded above by the number of boundary components of the intersection of the sphere with the complement of the link. In this paper, the author provides a lower upper bound for this distance. Indeed, the main result states that this upper bound is actually the number of boundary components minus two. The author also presents two practical applications of the main theorem. First, the main theorem is used to show that if the link is arborescent, then the upper bound for the distance is 2. Subsequently, the author makes use of the main result to prove that if the distance is greater than 2, then the link is hyperbolic.