Equivariant, almost-arborescent representations of open simply-connected 3-manifolds; a finiteness result (Q4809801)

The first author's collapsible pseudo-spine representation theorem [\textit{V. Poénaru}, Topology 31, 625--656 (1992; Zbl 0777.57013)], says that given a homotopy \(3\)-sphere \(\Sigma^3\), there exist a collapsible finite \(2\)-complex \(K^2\) and a nondegenerate simplicial map \(f\colon K^2\to\Sigma^3\) for which the complement of \(f(K^2)\) is a collection of open \(3\)-cells, and for which one can pass from \(K^2\) to \(f(K^2)\) by a sequence of elementary ``zipping moves'' which push a singular point along the line of double points of \(f\) in certain ways. The present work gives an extension of these ideas to the case of a simply-connected open \(3\)-manifold \(V^3\). As the authors explain, ``new phenomena appear: at the source of the representation, the set of double points is, generally speaking, no longer closed. We show that at the cost of replacing \(V^3\) by \(V^3_h=(\hbox{}V^3\) with very many holes