Singular surfaces, mod 2 homology, and hyperbolic volume. II. (Q616950)

As a refinement of results in a paper by \textit{I. Agol} and the authors [Trans. Am. Math. Soc. 362, No. 7, 3463--3498 (2010; Zbl 1195.57037)], the following partial analogue of Dehn's lemma for \(\pi_1\)-injective genus \(g\) surfaces is proved. For \(g \geq 2\), a closed simple 3-manifold \(M\) contains a closed, incompressible surface of genus at most \(g\) if \(\pi_1(M)\) has a subgroup isomorphic to a genus \(g\) surface group and, moreover, the dimension (2-rank) of the first homology of \(M\) with coefficients in \(\mathbb Z_2\) is greater than or equal to max\((3g-1, 6)\). For \(g=2\), examples of simple 3-manifolds \(M\) of 2-rank four are constructed such that \(\pi_1(M)\) contains a genus 2 surface group, but \(M\) contains no closed, incompressible surface whatever, so only the case of 2-rank five remains open here. As an application it is shown that a closed orientable hyperbolic 3-manifold of volume at most 3.08 has 2-rank at most five.