Open book decompositions versus prime factorizations of closed, oriented 3-manifolds

Abstract: Let

M

be a closed, oriented, connected 3--manifold and

(B, p i)

an open book decomposition on

M

with page

S i g m a

and monodromy

v a r p h i

. It is easy to see that the first Betti number of

S i g m a

is bounded below by the number of

S^{2} i m e s S^{1}

--factors in the prime factorization of

M

. Our main result is that equality is realized if and only if

v a r p h i

is trivial and

M

is a connected sum of

S^{2} i m e s S^{1}

's. We also give some applications of our main result, such as a new proof of the result by Birman and Menasco that if the closure of a braid with

n

strands is the unlink with

n

components then the braid is trivial.

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