All 2-dimensional links in 4-space live inside a universal 3-dimensional polyhedron (Q945656)

The authors study 2-links (that is, embedded surfaces) in \(\mathbb{R}^4\). They prove that any 2-link is isotopic to a surface embedded in an object called the universal 3-dimensional polyhedron, denoted by \(\mathrm{UP}\), and defined as the product of a segment with the hexabasic book, where the hexabasic book is the cone of the 1-dimensional skeleton of the union of two 3-dimensional polyhedra glued along a common face. The authors also construct a finitely presented semigroup whose central elements encode all isotopy classes of 2-dimensional surfaces. They thus reduce the problem of classifying isotopy classes of 2-links in \(\mathbb{R}^4\) to the word problem in a finitely presented semigroup.