Incompressible surfaces, hyperbolic volume, Heegaard genus and homology (Q842336)

If \(S\) is a properly embedded surface in a compact 3-manifold \(M\), let \(M\setminus S\) denote the manifold that is obtained by cutting along \(S\); it is homeomorphic to the complement in \(M\) of an open regular neighborhood of \(S\). The topological theme of the paper under review is that the bounded manifold obtained by cutting a topologically complex closed simple Haken 3-manifold along a suitably chosen incompressible surface \(S\subset M\) will also be topologically complex. Here the ``complexity'' of \(M\) is measured by the absolute value of the Euler characteristic of its ``kishkes'' defined as follows. A 3-manifold \(M\) is said to be simple if (i) \(M\) is compact, connected, orientable, irreducible and boundary irreducible; (ii) no subgroup of \(\pi_1(M)\) is isomorphic to \(\mathbb{Z}\times\mathbb{Z}\); and (iii) \(M\) is not a closed manifold with finite fundamental group. Let \(X\) be a simple 3-manifold with \(\partial X\neq\emptyset\). Then it can be proved that the characteristic submanifold \(\Sigma_X\) of \(X\) is well defined, up to isotopy, and each component of \(\Sigma_X\) is either an \(I\)-bundle meeting \(\partial X\) in its horizontal boundary, or a solid torus meeting \(\partial X\) in a collection of disjoint annuli that are homotopically non-trivial in \(X\). Then the kishkes of \(X\), written \(\text{kish}(X)\), is by definition the union of all components of \(\overline{X-\Sigma_X}\) that have negative Euler characteristic. The components of \(\text{kish}(X)\cap\Sigma_X\) are essential annuli in \(X\). If \(X\) is a compact 3-manifold whose components are all bounded and simple and if \(X_1,\dots,X_k\) denote the components of \(X\), then the kishkes of \(X\) is defined to be \(\text{kish}(X)= \text{kish}(X_1)\cup\cdots\cup\text{kish}(X_k)\subset X\). The authors obtain lower bounds for volumes of closed and one-cusped hyperbolic manifolds with sufficient topological complexity, extending work of Culler and Shalen along the same lines. Here ``topological complexity'' is measured in terms of the mod 2 first homology, or the mod 2 cohomology ring. More precisely, they show that if \(M\) is a complete, finite-volume, hyperbolic 3-manifold having exactly one cusp, and if \(\dim_{\mathbb{Z}_2} H_1(M;\mathbb{Z}_2)\geq 6\), then \(M\) has volume greater than 5.06. They also show that if \(M\) is a closed orientable hyperbolic 3-manifold with \(\dim_{\mathbb{Z}_2} H_1(M;\mathbb{Z}_2)\geq 4\), and if the image of the cup product map \(H^1(M;\mathbb{Z}_2)\otimes H^1(M;\mathbb{Z}_2)\to H^2(M;\mathbb{Z}_2)\) has dimension at most 1, then \(M\) has volume greater than 3.08. The proofs of these geometric results involve new topological results relating the Heegaard genus of a closed Haken manifold \(M\) to the Euler characteristic of the kishkes of the complement of an incompressible surface in \(M\).