The Thurston norm via normal surfaces (Q953164)

The present paper is based on normal surface theory (see, for example, [\textit{W. Jaco} and \textit{J. H. Rubinstein}, J. Differ. Geom. 65, No. 1, 61--168 (2003; Zbl 1068.57023)]) and is inspired by a desire of understand the topological significance of the faces of the unit ball of the Thurston norm. It is well-known that, given a triangulation of a closed, oriented, irreducible, atoroidal 3-manifold, every oriented, incompressible surface may be isotoped into normal position relative to the triangulation [\textit{W. Haken}, Acta Math. 105, 245--375 (1961; Zbl 0100.19402) and \textit{W. Jaco} and \textit{U. Oertel}, Topology 23, 195--209 (1984; Zbl 0545.57003)]. The authors prove that Euler characteristic and homology class of such a normal oriented surface S are both linear functions of the nonnegative integer weights -- 14 for each 3-simplex -- encoding S. As a consequence, the unit ball \(\mathcal B\) of the Thurston norm for a closed, orientable, irreducible, atoroidal 3-manifold is proved to be the projection under a linear map of a certain polyhedron in transversely oriented normal surface space. Applications include: {\parindent=4mm \begin{itemize}\item[--] a ``practical'' algorithm to compute \(\mathcal B\) and hence the Thurston norm of any homology class; \item[--] an explicit exponential bound on the number of vertices of \(\mathcal B\) in terms of the number of simplices in the triangulation; \item[--] an algorithm to determine the fibred faces of \(\mathcal B\) and hence an algorithm to decide whether a 3-manifold fibers over the circle. \end{itemize}} Note that an alternative approach to the above problems is given in [\textit{J. Tollefson} and \textit{N. Wang}, Topology 35, No.~1, 55--75 (1996; Zbl 0868.57022)]. The algorithm to compute \(\mathcal B\) given in the present paper is ``practical'' in the sense that the authors hope to implement it on a computer.