Band-taut sutured manifolds (Q384649)

A well known theorem of \textit{M. Lackenby} [Math. Ann. 308, No. 4, 615--632 (1997; Zbl 0876.57015)] relates Dehn surgery properties of a knot to the intersection between the knot and essential surfaces in the 3-manifold. In the paper under review, the author extends Lackenby's Theorem to the case of 2-handles attached to a sutured 3-manifold along a suture, by determining the relationship between an essential surface in a sutured 3-manifold, the number of intersections between the boundary of the surface and one of the sutures, and the cocore of the 2-handle in the manifold after attaching a 2-handle along the suture. The author makes use of \textit{M. Scharlemann}'s combinatorial version of sutured manifold theory [J. Differ. Geom. 29, No. 3, 557--614 (1989; Zbl 0673.57015)] and takes inspiration from Gabai's proof that, under suitable hypotheses, there is at most one way to fill a torus boundary component of a 3-manifold so that the Thurston norm decreases [\textit{D. Gabai}, J. Differ. Geom. 26, 461--478 (1987; Zbl 0627.57012)]. On the other hand, in order to prove the theorem, \textit{band-taut sutured manifolds} are introduced and \textit{band-taut sutured manifold hierarchies} are proved to exist. As an application, the paper shows that tunnels for tunnel number one knots or links in any 3-manifold can be isotoped to lie on a branched surface corresponding to a certain taut sutured manifold hierarchy of the knot or link exterior. Other interesting applications are contained in the author's paper [Trans. Am. Math. Soc. 366, No. 7, 3747--3769 (2014; Zbl 1297.57042)], where band sums are proved to satisfy the cabling conjecture, and new proofs that unknotting number one knots are prime and that genus is superadditive under band sum are obtained.