Three-dimensional manifolds with poor spines (Q492201)

In the present paper, the notion of \textit{poor spine} of a 3-manifold \(M\) is introduced and investigated. By definition, a simple spine of \(M\) is said to be poor if it does not contain proper simple subpolyhedra. By making use of the Turaev-Viro invariants (see [\textit{V. G. Turaev} and \textit{O. Y. Viro}, Topology 31, No.4, 865--902 (1992; Zbl 0779.57009)]), the authors prove that every compact 3-manifold \(M\) with connected nonempty boundary has a finite number of poor special spines; these poor special spines have the same number of true vertices, but in general this number may not be minimal among all special spines of \(M\). On the other hand, the main theorem of the paper states that Matveev complexity (see \textit{S. Matveev}'s book [Algorithmic topology and classification of 3-manifolds. 2nd ed. Algorithms and Computation in Mathematics 9. Berlin: Springer (2007; Zbl 1128.57001)]) is attained by poor spines within the class \(\mathcal M^2\) of connected orientable hyperbolic 3-manifolds with nonempty totally geodesic boundary and two 2-components: if \(M\) belongs to \(\mathcal M^2\) and has a poor special spine with \(n \geq 3\) true vertices, then \(c(M)=n.\) Examples of such manifolds are explicitly produced by the authors, for infinitely many values of \(n\). Hence, the paper yields a new infinite family of 3-manifolds for which the exact values of complexity are known (see for example [\textit{W. Jaco} et al., J. Topol. 2, No. 1, 157--180 (2009; Zbl 1227.57026)] and [Algebr. Geom. Topol. 11, No. 3, 1257--1265 (2011; Zbl 1229.57010)] for similar results in the closed case).