Complete systems of surfaces in 3-manifolds (Q4352089)

This paper provides some refinements of a classical theorem which characterizes a homotopy \(3\)-sphere \(M\) by the following property: (\(\ast\)) For any Heegaard splitting \((V; J_1 \cdots , J_n )\) of \(M\), where \(V\) is a handle-body and \(\{ J_i \}\) are disjoint closed curves in \(\partial V\), there is an embedding of \(V\) into \(S^3\) so that the \(\{ J_i\}\) bound disjoint orientable surfaces \(\{ S_i\}\) in \(\overline{S^3 -V}\). The main result here is that any irreducible homotopy sphere \(M\) admits a Heegaard splitting which satisfies (\(\ast\)) and with the extra property that, for any such embedding, the \(\{ S_i\}\) must have positive genus. More explicitly, it is shown that, given such an embedding, if any of the \(S_i\) is a disk then the splitting can be reduced to one of lower genus. A final observation is that one can choose a Heegaard splitting of \(M\) so that the \(S_i\) are all of genus \(1\).