Standard position for surfaces in link complements in arbitrary 3-manifolds

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Purcell, Jessica S., Tsvietkova, Anastasiia
Format: Preprint
Published: 2022
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author Purcell, Jessica S.
Tsvietkova, Anastasiia
author_facet Purcell, Jessica S.
Tsvietkova, Anastasiia
contents Since the 1980s, it has been known that essential surfaces in alternating link complements can be isotoped to be transverse to the link diagram almost everywhere, with the exception of some well-understood intersections, and described combinatorially as a result. This was called standard position for surfaces and has had numerous applications. However, the original techniques only apply to classical alternating links projected onto the 2-sphere inside the 3-sphere. In this paper, we prove that standard position for surfaces can be extended to a broader class, namely weakly generalized alternating links. Such links include all classical prime non-split alternating links in the 3-sphere, and also many links that are alternating on higher genus surfaces, or lie in manifolds besides the 3-sphere. As an application, we show that all such links are prime, and that under mild restrictions, essential Conway spheres for such links interact with the diagram exactly as in the classical alternating setting.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2205_06368
institution arXiv
publishDate 2022
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Standard position for surfaces in link complements in arbitrary 3-manifolds
Purcell, Jessica S.
Tsvietkova, Anastasiia
Geometric Topology
57K12, 57K10, 57K30
Since the 1980s, it has been known that essential surfaces in alternating link complements can be isotoped to be transverse to the link diagram almost everywhere, with the exception of some well-understood intersections, and described combinatorially as a result. This was called standard position for surfaces and has had numerous applications. However, the original techniques only apply to classical alternating links projected onto the 2-sphere inside the 3-sphere. In this paper, we prove that standard position for surfaces can be extended to a broader class, namely weakly generalized alternating links. Such links include all classical prime non-split alternating links in the 3-sphere, and also many links that are alternating on higher genus surfaces, or lie in manifolds besides the 3-sphere. As an application, we show that all such links are prime, and that under mild restrictions, essential Conway spheres for such links interact with the diagram exactly as in the classical alternating setting.
title Standard position for surfaces in link complements in arbitrary 3-manifolds
topic Geometric Topology
57K12, 57K10, 57K30
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2205.06368