Incompressibility criteria for spun-normal surfaces (Q2844742)

Let \(M\) be a compact oriented \(3\)-manifold with torus boundary, and \(S\) be an essential surface with boundary properly embedded in \(M\), then the boundary slope of \(S\) can be parametrized by the primitive homology class in \(H_1(\partial M; \mathbb{Z})/(\pm 1)\).NEWLINENEWLINEIn the paper under review, the authors study the set \(bs(M)\) of all boundary slopes of essential surfaces in \(M\). The set \(bs(M)\) is an important invariant of \(M\), and is a very useful tool for the study of other topics, e.g. the exceptional Dehn fillings. A natural question is how to compute \(bs(M)\)? A general algorithm was given by Jaco and Sedgwick based on normal surface theory, but this algorithm seems impractical in some sense. Some progress has been made by several authors, but there are still some examples remaining where \(bs(M)\) is unknown.NEWLINENEWLINEOne of the main results of this paper gives us a simple and sufficient condition for a normal surface to be essential. This is one of the first results obtained by directly applying normal surface algorithms.NEWLINENEWLINE{ Theorem 1.1.} Let \(M\) be a \(3\)-manifold with an ideal triangulation \(\mathcal{T}\). Suppose \(S\) is a vertex spun-normal surface in \(\mathcal{T}\) with nontrivial boundary. If \(S\) has a quadrilateral in every tetrahedron of \(\mathcal{T}\), then \(S\) is essential.NEWLINENEWLINEKabaya got a weaker version of this theorem using a different technique. The authors of this paper apply the language of normal surface theory. This makes the result easier to apply.NEWLINENEWLINEAlthough the condition in the theorem is far from being necessary, the authors use it to answer a question of Hatcher and Oertel. Precisely, they show the following:NEWLINENEWLINE{ Theorem 1.3.} There are alternating knots with nonintegral boundary slopes.NEWLINENEWLINEThe authors also give a proof of the Slope Conjecture of Garoufalidis using these results.