Topological geodesics and virtual rigidity

DOI10.2140/AGT.2001.1.369MaRDI QIDQ5934077zbMATH OpenOpenAlexFDO

Authors Louis Funar, Siddhartha Gadgil

Publication date 18 June 2001

Published in Algebraic \& Geometric Topology (Search for Journal in Brave)

Full work available at URL https://arxiv.org/abs/math/0106163, https://eudml.org/doc/121565, http://www.emis.de/journals/UW/agt/AGTVol1/agt-1-18.abs.html

zbMATH Keywords

residually finiteuniversal covervirtual rigidityword-hyperbolic group

Mathematics Subject Classification ID

Hyperbolic groups and nonpositively curved groups (20F67) Covering spaces and low-dimensional topology (57M10) General geometric structures on low-dimensional manifolds (57M50)

Abstract: We introduce the notion of a topological geodesic in a 3-manifold. Under suitable hypotheses on the fundamental group, for instance word-hyperbolicity, topological geodesics are shown to have the useful properties of, and play the same role in several applications as, geodesics in negatively curved spaces. This permits us to obtain virtual rigidity results for 3-manifolds.

Review text

The authors introduce the notion of topological geodesics in 3-manifolds and prove that, under suitable hypotheses on the fundamental group, they play the same role of geodesics in negatively curved space. An embedded curve \(\gamma\) in a 3-manifold \(M\) is a topological geodesic if a component \(\widetilde \gamma\) (and, as a consequence, all components) of its inverse image in the universal cover \(\widetilde M\) is unknotted. The following results are established: (i) (existence) if \(M\) is an irreducible 3-manifold with \(\pi_1(M)\) word-hyperbolic (or semi-hyperbolic), then every conjugacy class in \(\pi_1(M)\) is represented by a topological geodesic; (ii) (uniqueness) if \(M\) is an irreducible 3-manifold, with \(\pi_1(M)\) word-hyperbolic and residually finite, and \(c\) and \(c'\) are homotopic topological geodesics in \(M\) representing a primitive class of \(\pi_1(M)\) (i.e., not a multiple of any other class), then there exists a finite cover \(M'\) of \(M\) such that \(c\) and \(c'\) lift to isotopic curves in \(M'\). As an application, two results concerning the virtual rigidity of 3-manifolds (i.e., pairs of homotopy equivalent manifolds have finite covers which are homeomorphic), are proved, under suitable hypotheses.

Recommendations

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Cites work

• A THEOREM ON PERIODIC TRANSFORMATIONS OF SPACES
• Compactifying coverings of 3-manifolds
• Homotopy hyperbolic 3-manifolds are hyperbolic
• Homotopy Hyperbolic 3-Manifolds are Virtually Hyperbolic
• scientific article; zbMATH DE number 3390006 (Why is no real title available?)
• Immersions and Embeddings of Totally Geodesic Surfaces
• Nœuds Fox-résiduellement nilpotents et rigidité virtuelle des variétés hyperboliques de dimension 3. (Fox-residually nilpotent knots and virtual rigidity of hyperbolic 3-manifolds)
• On the geometric and topological rigidity of hyperbolic 3-manifolds
• Plane geodesically complete subsets of spaces with nonpositive curvature
• Semihyperbolic Groups
• SOME EXAMPLES OF EXOTIC NON-COMPACT 3-MANIFOLDS
• The Boundary of Negatively Curved Groups
• Transformations of finite period. 3. Newman's theorem

Cited in

(2)

• Local topological rigidity of nongeometric 3-manifolds
• Rigidity result for certain three-dimensional singular spaces and their fundamental groups

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