Annuli in generalized Heegaard splittings and degeneration of tunnel number

DOI10.1007/PL00004423MaRDI QIDQ1581829zbMATH OpenOpenAlexFDO

Authors Jennifer Schultens, Martin Scharlemann

Publication date 23 January 2001

Published in Mathematische Annalen (Search for Journal in Brave)

Full work available at URL https://arxiv.org/abs/math/9903078

zbMATH Keywords

degeneration ratioHeegaard splitting

Mathematics Subject Classification ID

Abstract: We analyze how a family of essential annuli in a compact 3-manifold will induce, from a strongly irreducible generalized Heegaard splitting of the ambient manifold, generalized Heegaard splittings of the complementary components. There are specific applications to the subadditivity of tunnel number of knots, improving somewhat bounds of Kowng. For example, in the absence of 2-bridge summands, the tunnel number of the sum of n knots is no less than 2/5 the sum of the tunnel numbers.

Review text

The main theorem of the paper shows how to cut a strongly irreducible generalized Heegaard splitting of a compact 3-manifold \(M\) along a family of essential annuli and create generalized Heegaard splittings for the resulting manifolds. This is applied to the behaviour of the tunnel number \(t\) under connected sums of knots. It is known that the difference between the sum of the tunnel numbers of the components \(K^1, \ldots, K^n\) of a composite knot and the tunnel number of the knot itself can be arbitrarily large. Thus one considers the degeneration ratio \(d(K^1, \ldots, K^n)\) which is defined as this difference divided by the sum of the tunnel numbers of the components, and the question arises if there is a uniform bound less than 1 on this degeneration ratio. Improving results of Kowng, it is shown that if all \(K^j\) are prime, then \(d(K^1,\ldots, K^n) \leq 2/3\), and that \(d(K^1,\ldots, K^n) \leq 3/5\) if none of the \(K^j\) is a 2-bridge knot.

Recommendations

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Cited in

(13)

• Circular thin position for knots in \(S^{3}\)
• Some results on Heegaard splitting
• On non-compact Heegaard splittings
• Multiple bridge surfaces restrict knot distance
• Heegaard genus formula for Haken manifolds
• A lower bound on tunnel number degeneration
• On the degeneration of tunnel numbers under a connected sum
• Tunnel numbers of knots
• Tunnel number degeneration under the connected sum of prime knots
• 3-manifolds with planar presentations and the width of satellite knots
• The Morse–Novikov number of knots under connected sum and cabling
• On Heegaard splittings of knot exteriors with tunnel number degenerations
• On the tunnel number and the Morse-Novikov number of knots

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