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Ian Agol

Publications and source records attributed to Ian Agol.

At least 19 recordsLinked to original sources
arXiv2026

Ribbon concordance of fibered knots and compressions of surface homeomorphisms

We prove that simplicial volume and dilatation are monotone under ribbon concordance between fibered knots in $S^3$, and that every fibered knot has only finitely many predecessors in the ribbon-concordance partial order, providing evidence for questions raised by Gordon. We also give an algorithm to enumerate, up to symmetries, all minimal compressions of a surface homeomorphism, extending a theorem of Casson--Long. This yields an algorithm to find all knots that are strongly homotopy-ribbon concordant to a given fibered knot in some homotopy $I\times S^3$. Our study of minimal compressions also provides an alternative perspective on results of Miyazaki concerning nonsimple fibered ribbon knots.

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arXiv2024

Simply transitive geodesics and omnipotence of lattices in PSL$(2,\mathbb{C})$

We show that the isometry group of a finite-volume hyperbolic 3-manifold acts simply transitively on many of its closed geodesics. Combining this observation with the Virtual Special Theorems of the first author and Wise, we show that every non-arithmetic lattice in PSL$(2,\mathbb{C})$ is the full group of orientation-preserving isometries for some other lattice and that the orientation-preserving isometry group of a finite-volume hyperbolic 3-manifold acts non-trivially on the homology of some finite-sheeted cover.

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arXiv2023

Chainmail links and L-spaces

In this note we prove that alternating chainmail links are L-space links. The proof is inspired by corresponding proofs for double branched covers of alternating links. We also more generally show that flat augmented chainmail links are generalized L-space links. Some other properties of these links are also considered.

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arXiv2022

Guts in Sutured Decompositions and the Thurston Norm

We construct an invariant called guts for second homology classes in irreducible 3-manifolds with toral boundary and non-degenerate Thurston norm. We prove that the guts of second homology classes in each Thurston cone are invariant under a natural condition. We show that the guts of different homology classes are related by sutured decompositions. As an application, an invariant of knot complements is given and is computed in a few interesting cases. Besides, we show that the dimension of a maximal simplex in a Kakimizu Complex is an invariant.

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arXiv2022

Peripheral birationality for 3-dimensional convex co-compact $PSL_2\mathbb{C}$ varieties

Let $M$ be a hyperbolizable $3$-manifold with boundary, and let $\chi_0(M)$ be a component of the $PSL_2\mathbb{C}$-character variety of $M$ that contains the convex co-compact characters. We show that the peripheral map $i_*:\chi_0(M)\rightarrow\chi(\partial M)$ to the character variety of $\partial M$ is a birational isomorphism with its image, and in particular is generically a one-to-one map. This generalizes work of Dunfield (one cusped hyperbolic $3$-manifolds) and Klaff-Tillmann (finite volume hyperbolic $3$-manifolds). We use the Bonahon-Schl\"afli formula and volume rigidity of discrete co-compact representations.

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arXiv2022

Ribbon concordance of knots is a partial order

In this note we show that ribbon concordance forms a partial ordering on the set of knots, answering a question of Gordon. The proof makes use of representation varieties of the knot groups to $SO(N)$ and relations between them induced by a ribbon concordance.

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arXiv2022

Dynamics of veering triangulations: infinitesimal components of their flow graphs and applications

We study the strongly connected components of the flow graph associated to a veering triangulation, and show that the infinitesimal components must be of a certain form, which have to do with subsets of the triangulation which we call `walls'. We show two applications of this knowledge: (1) a fix of a proof in the original paper by the first author which introduced veering triangulations; and (2) an alternate proof that veering triangulations induce pseudo-Anosov flows without perfect fits, which was initially proved by Schleimer and Segerman.

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arXiv2019

Congruence RFRS towers

We describe a criterion for a real or complex hyperbolic lattice to admit a RFRS tower that consists entirely of congruence subgroups. We use this to show that certain Bianchi groups $\mathrm{PSL}(\mathcal{O}_d)$ are virtually fibered on congruence subgroups, and also exhibit the first examples of RFRS Kähler groups that are not a subgroup of a product of surface groups and abelian groups.

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arXiv2019

Rigidity in hyperbolic Dehn filling

This paper concerns with a rigidity of core geodesics in hyperbolic Dehn fillings. For instance, for an $n$-cusped hyperbolic $3$-manifold $M$ having non-symmetric cusp shapes, we show any Dehn filling of $M$ with sufficiently large coefficient is uniquely determined by the product of the holonomies of its core geodesics. We also explore various implications of the main results. An appendix by I. Agol provides an alternative geometric proof of one of the corollaries of our main arguments.

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arXiv2019

Embedding Heegaard Decompositions

A smooth embedding of a closed $3$-manifold $M$ in $\mathbb{R}^4$ may generically be composed with projection to the fourth coordinate to determine a Morse function on $M$ and hence a Heegaard splitting $M=X\cup_ΣY$. However, starting with a Heegaard splitting, we find an obstruction coming from the geometry of the curve complex $C(Σ)$ to realizing a corresponding embedding $M\hookrightarrow \mathbb{R}^4$.

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arXiv2018

Hyperbolic four-manifolds with vanishing Seiberg-Witten invariants

We show the existence of hyperbolic 4-manifolds with vanishing Seiberg-Witten invariants, addressing a conjecture of Claude LeBrun. This is achieved by showing, using results in geometric and arithmetic group theory, that certain hyperbolic 4-manifolds contain L-spaces as hypersurfaces.

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arXiv2018

Structure of the flow and Yamada polynomials of cubic graphs

We establish a quadratic identity for the Yamada polynomial of ribbon cubic graphs in 3-space, extending the Tutte golden identity for planar cubic graphs. An application is given to the structure of the flow polynomial of cubic graphs at zero. The golden identity for the flow polynomial is conjectured to characterize planarity of cubic graphs, and we prove this conjecture for a certain infinite family of non-planar graphs. Further, we establish exponential growth of the number of chromatic polynomials of planar triangulations, answering a question of D. Treumann and E. Zaslow. The structure underlying these results is the chromatic algebra, and more generally the SO(3) topological quantum field theory.

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arXiv2015

Tutte relations, TQFT, and planarity of cubic graphs

It has been known since the work of Tutte that the value of the chromatic polynomial of planar triangulations at $(3+\sqrt{5})/2$ has a number of remarkable properties. We investigate to what extent Tutte's relations characterize planar graphs. A version of the Tutte linear relation for the flow polynomial at $(3-\sqrt{5})/2$ is shown to give a planarity criterion for $3$-connected cubic graphs. A conjecture is formulated that the golden identity for the flow polynomial characterizes planarity of cubic graphs as well. In addition, Tutte's upper bound on the chromatic polynomial of planar triangulations at $(3+\sqrt{5})/2$ is generalized to other Beraha numbers, and an exponential lower bound is given for the value at $(3-\sqrt{5})/2$. The proofs of these results rely on the structure of the Temperley-Lieb algebra and more generally on methods of topological quantum field theory.

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arXiv2015

Min-max theory and the energy of links

Freedman, He, and Wang, conjectured in 1994 that the Mobius energy should be minimized, among the class of all nontrivial links in Euclidean space, by the stereographic projection of the standard Hopf link. We prove this conjecture using the min-max theory of minimal surfaces.

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arXiv2015

Certifying the Thurston norm via SL(2, C)-twisted homology

We study when the Thurston norm is detected by twisted Alexander polynomials associated to representations of the 3-manifold group to SL(2, C). Specifically, we show that the hyperbolic torsion polynomial determines the genus for a large class of hyperbolic knots in the 3-sphere which includes all special arborescent knots and many knots whose ordinary Alexander polynomial is trivial. This theorem follows from results showing that the tautness of certain sutured manifolds can be certified by checking that they are a product from the point of view of homology with coefficients twisted by an SL(2, C)-representation.

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arXiv2015

Pseudo-Anosov stretch factors and homology of mapping tori

We consider the pseudo-Anosov elements of the mapping class group of a surface of genus g that fix a rank k subgroup of the first homology of the surface. We show that the smallest entropy among these is comparable to (k+1)/g. This interpolates between results of Penner and of Farb and the second and third authors, who treated the cases of k=0 and k=2g, respectively, and answers a question of Ellenberg. We also show that the number of conjugacy classes of pseudo-Anosov mapping classes as above grows (as a function of g) like a polynomial of degree k.

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arXiv2014

Simplifying 3-manifolds in R^4

We show that a smooth embedding of a closed 3-manifold in S^3 x R can be isotoped so that every generic level divides S^3 x t into two handlebodies (i.e., is Heegaard) provided the original embedding has a unique local maximum with respect to the R coordinate. This allows uniqueness of embeddings to be studied via the mapping class group of surfaces and the Schoenflies conjecture is considered in this light. We also give a necessary and sufficient condition that a 3-manifold connected summed with arbitrarily many copies of S^1 x S^2 embeds in R^4.

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