Some hyperbolic three-manifolds that bound geometrically

Abstract

A closed connected hyperbolic $n$-manifold bounds geometrically if it is isometric to the geodesic boundary of a compact hyperbolic $(n+1)$-manifold. A. Reid and D. Long have shown by arithmetic methods the existence of infinitely many manifolds that bound geometrically in every dimension. We construct here infinitely many explicit examples in dimension $n=3$ using right-angled dodecahedra and $120$-cells and a simple colouring technique introduced by M. Davis and T. Januszkiewicz. Namely, for every $k\geqslant 1$, we build an orientable compact closed $3$-manifold tessellated by $16k$ right-angled dodecahedra that bounds a $4$-manifold tessellated by $32k$ right-angled $120$-cells. A notable feature of this family is that the ratio between the volumes of the $4$-manifolds and their boundary components is constant and, in particular, bounded.