Reducible and toroidal 3-manifolds obtained by Dehn fillings (Q675090)

When \(M\) is a compact 3-manifold whose boundary is a torus, a closed 3-manifold can be obtained by identifying the boundary of \(M\) with the boundary of a solid torus. This process is known as Dehn filling, and the resulting manifold is determined by the isotopy class of the simple closed loop in \(\partial M\) to which the boundary of a meridian disc of the solid torus is attached. For two such attaching loops, the minimal number of points of intersection between any two loops isotopic to them in \(\partial M\) is a measure of the ``distance'' between them. In the last decade dramatic advances have been made in understanding the closed manifolds that can result from Dehn filling. Notably, a powerful combinatorial theory was developed in \textit{M. Culler, C. McA. Gordon, J. Luecke} and \textit{P. B. Shalen} [Ann. Math., II. Ser. 125, 237-300 (1987; Zbl 0633.57006)] and refined further by Gordon and Luecke in a series of papers, and by other mathematicians. In the paper under review, the author proves a typical kind of result for this genre: if the interior of \(M\) is hyperbolic, and two Dehn fillings of \(M\) yield respectively a toroidal 3-manifold (one containing an incompressible imbedded torus) and a reducible 3-manifold (one containing a 2-sphere that does not bound a 3-ball), then the distance between the attaching curves is at most 3. This result was recently proven independently by \textit{Y. Wu} [Dehn fillings producing reducible manifolds and toroidal manifolds, preprint]. It improves a result of \textit{S. Boyer} and \textit{X. Zhang} [Reducing Dehn filling and toroidal Dehn filling, preprint], who proved that the distance is at most 4, and gave an example where it equals 3. The author's method uses the setup developed by Gordon and Luecke. The hypothesized 2-sphere and torus are intersected with the original \(M\), producing two surfaces, and a graph is constructed that encodes information about the intersection of these two surfaces. Combinatorial arguments using this graph show that the distance is at most 3.