Triangulations of 3-manifolds with essential edges

Abstract

We define essential and strongly essential triangulations of 3-manifolds, and give four constructions using different tools (Heegaard splittings, hierarchies of Haken 3-manifolds, Epstein-Penner decompositions, and cut loci of Riemannian manifolds) to obtain triangulations with these properties under various hypotheses on the topology or geometry of the manifold. We also show that a semi-angle structure is a sufficient condition for a triangulation of a 3-manifold to be essential, and a strict angle structure is a sufficient condition for a triangulation to be strongly essential. Moreover, algorithms to test whether a triangulation of a 3-manifold is essential or strongly essential are given.

30 pages, 14 figures. Exposition improved