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7 votes
2 answers
534 views

Does there exist a Dehn filling of an irreducible 3-manifold with toroidal boundaries which is still irreducible?

Let $M$ be a compact, orientable, irreducible 3-manifold with incompressible toroidal boundary (there might be more than one boundary component). Is it always possible to choose appropriate slopes on ...
0 votes
1 answer
168 views

Mappings of reducible 3 manifolds with boundary

In section 3 of his paper "Mappings of reducible 3 manifolds" McCullough, proves that every self-homeomorphism of a reducible 3 manifold can up to isotopy be written as a composition of ...
7 votes
1 answer
319 views

Lens space bounding a topological, simply-connected 4-manifold with $b_2=1$

The following is written in section 1.6 (p.7) of this paper: https://arxiv.org/pdf/1010.6257.pdf. ($\cdots$) Which lens spaces bound a smooth, simply-connected 4-manifold $W$ with $b_2(W)=1$? ($\cdots$...
8 votes
1 answer
281 views

Non-compact three-manifolds with the same proper homotopy type are homeomorphic?

I am looking for some literature with some (counter) examples of the following fact (though I don't know if the fact is true or not): Let $M, M'$ be two non-compact connected $3$-manifolds with the ...
6 votes
1 answer
184 views

Uniqueness of the set of decomposing spheres in prime decomposition of a 3-manifold

At the end of Section 1.1 of 3-manifold groups it is written that "the decomposing spheres are not unique up to isotopy, but two different sets of decomposing spheres are related by ‘slide ...
3 votes
1 answer
76 views

Given a Heegaard splitting $M = V\cup_F W$, then $V\setminus N(D_1)$ is ambient isotopic to $V\cup N(D_2)$ for a meridian pair $\{D_1,D_2\}$

I sincerely apologize if MathOverflow is not the appropriate place to ask this question. I also tried consulting M.SE but it seems that this question gained little to no interest . Consider a ...
7 votes
1 answer
354 views

Decomposition of manifolds with toroidal boundary

Let $\mathcal{M}$ be a compact, connected, oriented 3-manifolds with non-empty connected boundary $\partial\mathcal{M}$. Then, following this article, it is stated that $\mathcal{M}$ can be written as ...
14 votes
1 answer
937 views

Classification of 3-dimensional manifolds with boundary

It is well-known that every closed, connected and orientable 3-manifold $\mathcal{M}$ can uniquely be decomposed as $$\mathcal{M}=P_{1}\#\dots\# P_{n}$$ where $P_{i}$ are prime manifolds, i.e. ...
2 votes
1 answer
227 views

Uniqueness of spheres in prime decomposition of a 3-manifold

Let $M$ be a closed connected orientable 3-manifold. Then Kneser tells us that there is a decomposition $M = P_1 \sharp \cdots \sharp P_k$ of $M$ into prime manifolds. Milnor tells us that if $M = ...
9 votes
1 answer
439 views

Action of diffeomorphism group on non-vanishing vector fields

Let $M$ denote a closed manifold. Let $\Gamma(TM\setminus 0) $ denote the space of non-vanishing sections of $TM$. Note that the diffeomorphism group $\text{Diff} (M)$ acts on $\Gamma(TM\setminus 0)...
8 votes
2 answers
2k views

Classification of closed 3-manifolds with finite first homology group?

I am interested in a topological classification of connected closed 3-manifold $M$ that have finite homology group $H_1(M)$. Since $H_1(M)$ is the abelization of the fundamental group $\pi_1(M)$, ...
17 votes
1 answer
525 views

Lowest Dimension for Counterexample in Topological Manifold Factorization

Bing gave a classical example of spaces $X, Y, Z$ such that $X \times Y = Z$, where $X$ and $Z$ are manifolds but $Y$ isn't. The space $Z$ in his example has dimension four. Is it known if this is ...
7 votes
1 answer
731 views

What is "topology in dimension 3.5"?

I've noticed a couple of conference titles which reference something called "topology in dimension 3.5," such as this one and this one. This subject seems quite mysterious to me — it looks like ...
7 votes
1 answer
475 views

Can we cut and rotate a particular region of a hyperbolic 3-manifold to get another (non-homeomorphic) hyperbolic 3-manifold?

I'm trying to learn more about hyperbolic 3-manifolds, in particular the geometric implications of doing hyperbolic Dehn surgery to suitable knot complements. Following this paper by Christian ...
11 votes
2 answers
747 views

Volume of an ideal simplex in $\mathbb{H}^3$, idea/intuition behind result

There is the following result on page 160 of Thurston's book "The Geometry and Topology of Three-Manifolds", as follows. The volume of an ideal simplex in $\mathbb{H}^3$ with dihedral angles $\...
5 votes
1 answer
1k views

On the fundamental group of closed 3-manifolds

I know that every finitely presented group can be realized as the fundamental group of a compact, connected, smooth manifold of dimension 4 (or higher). In dimension 2 there are strong restriction on ...
4 votes
0 answers
269 views

Action of the mapping class group on separating spheres in a connected sum of aspherical 3-manifolds

Let $M$ be a connected sum of $g$ closed aspherical 3-manifolds $M_1, \ldots, M_g$. [Update: I also assume that all the $M_i$-s are diffeomorphic, i.e. $M$ is a connected sum of copies of the same ...
4 votes
0 answers
302 views

Haken manifolds and characterising sutured manifold hierarchies

In Gabai's paper (Knot Theory and Manifolds Lecture Notes in Mathematics Volume 1144, 1985, pp 14-17 An internal hierarchy for 3-manifolds) he considers sutured manifold decompositions of Haken $3$--...