Indecomposable PD₃-complexes

Abstract: We show that if

X

is an indecomposable

P D_{3}

-complex and

p i_{1} (X) i s t h e f u n d a m e n t a l g r o u p o f a r e d u c e d f i n i t e g r a p h o f f i n i t e g r o u p s b u t i s n o t v i r t u a l l y c y c l i c t h e n

X

i s o r i e n t a b l e, t h e u n d e r l y i n g g r a p h i s a t r e e, a l l t h e e d g e g r o u p s a r e

Z/2Z

a n d a l l b u t a t m o s t o n e o f t h e v e r t e x g r o u p s i s d i h e d r a l o f o r d e r

2m

w i t h

m

o d d . E v e r y s u c h g r o u p i s r e a l i z e d b y s o m e

PD_3

- c o m p l e x . W e a l s o p r o p o s e a s t r a t e g y f o r t a c k l i n g t h e q u e s t i o n o f w h e t h e r e v e r y

PD_3$-complex has a finite covering space which is homotopy equivalent to a closed orientable 3-manifold.

Review text

By Turaev's splitting theorem a $\text{PD}_3$-complex decomposes as a connected sum if and only if its fundamental group is a free product. Crisp showed that every indecomposable $\text{PD}_3$-complex is either aspherical or its fundamental group is the fundamental group of a finite graph of finite groups. The main result of the paper under review is that ``if $X$ is an indecomposable $\text{PD}_3$-complex and $\pi_1(X)$ is the fundamental group of a reduced finite graph of finite groups but is neither $\mathbb Z$ nor $\mathbb Z \oplus \mathbb Z / 2 \mathbb Z$ then $X$ is orientable, the underlying graph is a tree, the vertex groups have cohomological period dividing 4 and all but at most one of the edge groups is $\mathbb Z / 2 \mathbb Z$. If there are no exceptions then all but at most one of the vertex groups are dihedral of order $2m$ with $m$ odd. Every such group is realized by some $\text{PD}_3$-complex. Otherwise, one edge group may be $\mathbb Z / 6 \mathbb Z$. The author uses a reformulation of Turaev's criterion for a group to be the fundamental group of a $\text{PD}_3$-complex and one of Crisp's results. A section on indecomposable nonorientable $\text{PD}_3$-complexes shows that the only such complexes with virtually free fundamental group are $S^1 \tilde \times S^2$ and $S^1 \times \mathbb RP^2$. The final section is concerned with the question of whether every aspherical $\text{PD}_3$-complex is homotopy equivalent to a closed 3-manifold which the author proposes to reduce to a question about Dehn surgery on links.

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