High distance bridge surfaces (Q357717)

A link in a closed orientable 3-manifold is in bridge position with respect to a surface, if the surface is a Heegaard surface for the manifold and the link intersects each of the components of the surface complement in arcs that are simultaneously parallel to the surface. If the link is in bridge position with respect to a surface, we say that the surface is a bridge surface for the link. The points of intersection of the link with the surface determine a marked surface. The distance of the bridge surface is defined in terms of the curve complex of the corresponding marked surface. For given integers \(b, c, g, n\) the authors construct a manifold containing a \(c\)-component link so that there is a bridge surface of genus \(g\) that intersects the link in \(2b\) points and has distance at least \(n\). Some of the techniques used in this article are generalisations of those used by \textit{T. Evans} in [Topology Appl. 153, No. 14, 2631--2647 (2006; Zbl 1107.57011)] to construct 3-manifolds with arbitrarily high distance Heegaard splittings. These techniques are purely combinatorial. It is worth mentioning that \textit{K. Ichihara} and \textit{T. Saito} [``Knots with arbitrarily high distance bridge decompositions'', \url{arXiv:1209.0097}], have extended the result in this paper. Namely they have proved that for any closed orientable 3-manifold with a Heegaard surface of genus \(g\), and any given positive integers \(b\) and \(n\), there is a knot that is in bridge position with respect to the Heegaard surface and intersects it in \(2b\) points, and the distance of the surface is greater than \(n\), except for \((b,n)=(0,1), (0,2)\).