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Marc Culler

Publications and source records attributed to Marc Culler.

12 recordsLinked to original sources

Orderability and Dehn filling

Motivated by conjectures relating group orderability, Floer homology, and taut foliations, we discuss a systematic and broadly applicable technique for constructing left-orders on the fundamental groups of rational homology 3-spheres. Specifically, for a compact 3-manifold $M$ with torus boundary, we give several criteria which imply that whole intervals of Dehn fillings of $M$ have left-orderable fundamental groups. Our technique uses certain representations from $\pi_1(M)$ into $\widetilde{\mathrm{PSL}_2 \mathbb{R}}$, which we organize into an infinite graph in $H^1(\partial M; \mathbb{R})$ called the translation extension locus. We include many plots of such loci which inform the proofs of our main results and suggest interesting avenues for future research.

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Margulis numbers for Haken manifolds

For every closed hyperbolic Haken 3-manifold and, more generally, for any hyperbolic 3-manifold M which is homeomorphic to the interior of a Haken manifold, the number 0.286 is a Margulis number. If M has non-zero first Betti number, or if M is closed and contains a semi-fiber, then 0.292 is a Margulis number for M.

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Dehn surgery, homology and hyperbolic volume

If a closed, orientable hyperbolic 3--manifold M has volume at most 1.22 then H_1(M;Z_p) has dimension at most 2 for every prime p not 2 or 7, and H_1(M;Z_2) and H_1(M;Z_7) have dimension at most 3. The proof combines several deep results about hyperbolic 3--manifolds. The strategy is to compare the volume of a tube about a shortest closed geodesic C in M with the volumes of tubes about short closed geodesics in a sequence of hyperbolic manifolds obtained from M by Dehn surgeries on C.

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Betti numbers and injectivity radii

We give lower bounds on the maximal injectivity radius for a closed orientable hyperbolic 3-manifold M with first Betti number 2, under some additional topological hypotheses. A corollary of the main result is that if M has first Betti number 2 and contains no fibroid surface then its maximal injectivity radius exceeds 0.32798. For comparison, Andrew Przeworski showed, with no topological restrictions, that the maximal injectivity radius exceeds arcsinh(1/4) = 0.247..., while the authors showed that if M has first Betti number at least 3 then the maximal injectivity exceeds log(3)/2 = 0.549.... The proof combines a result due to Przeworski with techniques developed by the authors in the 1990s.

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Incompressible surfaces, hyperbolic volume, Heegaard genus and homology

We show that if M is a complete, finite-volume, hyperbolic 3-manifold having exactly one cusp, and if H_1(M;Z_2) has dimension at least 6, then M has volume greater than 5.06. We also show that if M is a closed, orientable hyperbolic 3-manifold such that H_1(M;Z_2) has dimension at least 4, and if the image of the cup product map in H^2(M;Z_2) has dimension at most 1, then M has volume greater than 3.08. The proofs of these geometric results involve new topological results relating the Heegaard genus of a closed Haken manifold M to the Euler characteristic of the kishkes (i.e guts) of the complement of an incompressible surface in M.

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Four-free groups and hyperbolic geometry

We give new information about the geometry of closed, orientable hyperbolic 3-manifolds with 4-free fundamental group. As an application we show that such a manifold has volume greater than 3.44. This is in turn used to show that if M is a closed orientable hyperbolic 3-manifold such that vol M < 3.44, then H_1(M;Z/2Z) has dimension at most 7.

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Singular surfaces, mod 2 homology, and hyperbolic volume, I

This paper contains a purely topological theorem and a geometric application. The topological theorem states that if M is a simple closed orientable 3-manifold such that π_1(M) contains a genus g surface group and H_1(M;Z/2Z) has rank at least 4g-1 then M contains a closed incompressible surface of genus at most g. This result should be viewed as an analogue of Dehn's Lemma for π_1-injective singular surfaces. The geometric application states that if M is a closed orientable hyperbolic 3-manifold with volume less than 3.08 then the rank of H_1(M;Z/2Z) is at most 6. The proof of the geometric theorem combines the topological theorem with several deep geometric results, including the Marden tameness conjecture,recently established by Agol and by Calegari-Gabai; a co-volume estimate for 3-tame, 3-free Kleinian groups due to Anderson, Canary, Culler and Shalen; and a volume estimate for hyperbolic Haken manifolds recently proved by Agol, Storm and W. Thurston.

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Volume and homology of one-cusped hyperbolic 3-manifolds

Let M be a complete, finite-volume, orientable hyperbolic manifold having exactly one cusp. If we assume that pi_1(M) has no subgroup isomorphic to a genus-2 surface group, and that either (a) H_1(M;Z_p) has dimension at least 5 for some prime p, or (b) H_1(M;Z_2) has dimension at least 4, and the subspace of H^2(M;Z_2) spanned by the image of the cup product has dimension at most 1, then vol M > 5.06 If we assume that H_1(M;Z_2) has dimension at least 7, and that the compact core of M does not contain a genus-2 closed incompressible surface, then vol M > 5.06.

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Singular surfaces, mod 2 homology, and hyperbolic volume, II

If M is a closed simple 3-manifold whose fundamental group contains a genus-g surface group for some g>1, and if the dimension of H_1(M;Z_2) is at least max(3g-1,6), we show that M contains a closed, incompressible surface of genus at most g. This improves the main topological result of part I, in which the the same conclusion was obtained under the stronger hypothesis that the dimension of H_1(M;Z_2) is at least 4g-1. As an application we show that if M is a closed orientable hyperbolic 3-manifold with volume at most 3.08, then H_1(M;Z_2) has dimension at most 5.

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Characteristic Subsurfaces, Character Varieties and Dehn Filling

We give new bounds for the distance between two exceptional filling slopes for a 1-cusped hyperbolic 3-manifold in several different situations. The distance between a reducible slope and a slope that produces a manifold with finite fundamental group is at most 2. The distance between a reducible slope and one that produces a very small manifold is also at most 2. The distance between a reducible slope and one which produces a manifold with a pi_1 injective torus is at most 4. The methods used involve both characteristic submanifold theory and the theory of the PSL(2,C) character variety.

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Knots with only two strict essential surfaces

We consider irreducible 3-manifolds M that arise as knot complements in closed 3-manifolds and that contain at most two connected strict essential surfaces. The results in the paper relate the boundary slopes of the two surfaces to their genera and numbers of boundary components. Explicit quantitative relationships, with interesting asymptotic properties, are obtained in the case that M is a knot complement in a closed manifold with cyclic fundamental group.

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Characteristic subsurfaces and Dehn filling

Let M be a compact, orientable, irreducible, atoroidal 3-manifold with boundary an incompressible torus. Techniques based on the characteristic submanifold theory are used to bound the intersection number of two slopes αand βon the boundary of M. The method applies when βis the boundary slope of an essential surface F that is not a semi-fiber (i.e. F is not a fiber and does not split M into two twisted I-bundles), and the Dehn filling M(α) contains a suitable singular surface. One of the main results is that if F is planar and if the fundamental group of M(α) does not contain a non-abelian free subgroup then the intersection number of αand βis at most 5.

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