Compressing thin spheres in the complement of a link
Abstract
Let L be a link in the 3-sphere that is in thin position but not in bridge position and let P be a thin level sphere. We generalize a result of Wu by giving a bound on the number of disjoint irreducible compressing disks that P can have, including identifying thin spheres with unique compressing disks. We also give conditions under which P must be incompressible on a particular side or be weakly incompressible. If P is strongly compressible we describe how a pair of compressing disks must lie relative to the link.
- Publication:
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arXiv Mathematics e-prints
- Pub Date:
- April 2004
- DOI:
- 10.48550/arXiv.math/0404282
- arXiv:
- arXiv:math/0404282
- Bibcode:
- 2004math......4282T
- Keywords:
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- Mathematics - Geometric Topology;
- 57M25
- E-Print:
- New results have been added including a bound on the number of disjoint irreducible compressing disks a thin sphere can have. 15 pages, 9 figures