Embedding closed hyperbolic 3-manifolds in small volume hyperbolic 4-manifolds (Q2667205)

The authors study the existence of closed, totally geodesic, codimension-one embedded totally geodesic submanifolds inside minimal volume cusped orientable hyperbolic manifolds. A hyperbolic \(n\)-manifold is the quotient \(M=\mathbb{H}^n/\Gamma\) of hyperbolic space \(\mathbb{H}^n\) by a torsion-free lattice \(\Gamma < \mathrm{Isom}(\mathbb{H}^n)\cong \mathrm{PO}(n,1)\). Such a manifold \(M\) can be either closed (when \(\Gamma\) admits a compact fundamental domain) or cusped (when it does not admit a compact fundamental domain i.e.\ \(\Gamma\) contains parabolic elements). In all dimensions, the volumes of orientable hyperbolic manifolds form a well ordered set and thus we may speak of hyperbolic \(n\)-manifolds of minimal volume. A totally geodesic submanifold in \(M\) is a hyperbolic manifold \(N\) together with a totally geodesic immersion \(N \rightarrow M\). If \(M\) is closed all of its totally geodesic submanifolds are forced to be closed, while if \(M\) is cusped it can generally contain both closed or cusped totally geodesic submanifolds. A particularly interesting case of study is when the map \(N \rightarrow M\) is an embedding and \(N\) has codimension \(1\) in \(M\). The authors focus on the case where \(M\) has dimension \(4\) and look at the census of \(22\) orientable, minimal volume hyperbolic manifolds constructed in [\textit{J. G. Ratcliffe} and \textit{S. T. Tschantz}, Exp. Math. 9, No. 1, 101--125 (2000; Zbl 0963.57012)]. They prove the following result. Theorem 1: None of the 22 manifolds from the census contains a closed embedded, orientable, totally geodesic hyperbolic \(3\)-manifold. In contrast it is easy to see that these examples contain several embedded cusped hyperbolic \(3\)-manifolds. Moreover, the authors prove that all arithmetic hyperbolic \(4\)-manifolds (such as those from the above mentioned census) contain examples of closed immersed totally geodesic hyperbolic \(3\)-manifolds. This result is specific of dimensions \(3\) and \(4\). The authors also look at an example of a hyperbolic \(4\)-manifold \(M\) with twice the minimal volume, and prove the existence of a cusped embedded totally geodesic \(3\)-manifold in \(M\) as well as the absence of closed embedded totally geodesic \(3\)-manifolds in \(M\). All these results suggest that having small volume poses severe restrictions on the existence of closed totally geodesic embedded codimension-one submanifolds in hyperbolic manifolds. The techniques involved are a careful analysis of the geometry and topology of the manifolds from the Ratcliffe-Tschantz census, as well as the construction of anisotropic subforms of certain quadratic forms of signature \((4,1)\). The authors also make nice use of a geometric inequality due to \textit{A. Basmajian} [Invent. Math. 117, No. 2, 207--225 (1994; Zbl 0809.53052)] concerning volumes of tubular neigborhoods of closed, embedded totally geodesic hypersurfaces.