The maximum and minimum genus of a multibranched surface (Q820638)

This paper gives lower bounds for the maximum and minimum genera of a given multibranched surface, a generalization of a graph as a 1-dimensional CW complex. A (second countable) Hausdorff space \(X\) is called a multibranched surface if \(X\) contains a disjoint union \(L\) of simple closed curves such that an open neighborhood of a point \(x\in X\) is homeomorphic to an open 2-disk if \(x \not\in L\), and otherwise is homeomorphic to the interior of \(T\times [0,1]\), where \(T\) is a 1-dimensional complex obtained by joining each vertex of a regular polygon to its center. It is shown in [\textit{S. Matsuzaki} and \textit{M. Ozawa}, Topology Appl. 230, 621--638 (2017; Zbl 1376.57024)] that a multibranched surface \(X\) can be embedded in some closed orientable 3-manifold if and only if \(X\) is ``regular''. A typical example of a regular multibranched surface, as studied in this paper, is obtained from a graph \(G\) by taking the product with \(S^1\). Considering the Heegaard genera of 3-manifolds containing \(X\), Matsuzaki and the second author introduced the maximum/minimum genus, say \(\min g(X)\) and \(\max g(X)\) respectively, for a regular multibranched surface \(X\). The first main theorem of this paper gives their lower bounds, and the second main theorem states that \(\min g(G \times S^1)\) and \(\max g(G \times S^1)\) are equal to the double of \(\min g(G)\) and \(\max g(G)\), respectively.