A spherical decomposition for Riemannian open 3-manifolds (Q2458421)

This paper deals with the existence of a spherical decomposition for an open three manifold. It finds an interesting characterization for the existence of such a decomposition in terms of Riemannian geometry. A spherical decomposition means a family of spheres that are locally finite (i.e. each compact subset meets a finite number of them), and so that, when cutting along the spheres, the 3-dimensional pieces are weakly irreducible: after capping off balls to boundary spheres, every embedded sphere should bound a homotopy ball (or a ball, once the proof of the Poincaré conjecture is accepted). Here is the main theorem of the paper: An open 3-manifold \(M\) admits such a spherical decomposition if and only if \(M\) can be equipped with a Riemannian metric of bounded geometry so that \(\pi_2(M)\) is generated as \(\pi_1(M)\)-module by elements of bounded area. Recall that bounded geometry means pinched curvature and also injectivity radius bounded away from zero. In this equivalence, the difficult step is to find the spherical decomposition starting from the metric. The proof uses the existence of a triangulation with nice metric properties, as well as extension of the techniques of PL minimal surface theory [\textit{W. H. Jaco} and \textit{J. H. Rubinstein}, J. Differ. Geom. 27, No.~3, 493--524 (1988; Zbl 0652.57005)], as in a previous work of the author [\textit{S. Maillot}, Trans. Am. Math. Soc. 355, No.~11, 4595--4638 (2003; Zbl 1030.57029)].