Simplification paths in the Pachner graphs of closed orientable 3-manifold triangulations

We define a new combinatorial class of triangulations of closed 3-manifolds, satisfying a weak version of 0-efficiency combined with a weak version of minimality, and study them using twisted squares. As an application, we obtain strong restrictions on the topology of a 3-manifold from the existence of non-smooth maxima of the volume function on the space of circle-valued angle structures.

In loop quantum gravity, states of quantum geometry are represented by classes of knotted graphs, equivalent under diffeomorphisms. Thus, it is worthwhile to enumerate and distinguish these classes. This paper looks at the case of 4-regular graphs, which have an interpretation as objects dual to triangulations of three-dimensional manifolds. Two different polynomial invariants are developed to characterize these graphs -- one inspired by the Kauffman bracket relations, and th...

To enumerate 3-manifold triangulations with a given property, one typically begins with a set of potential face pairing graphs (also known as dual 1-skeletons), and then attempts to flesh each graph out into full triangulations using an exponential-time enumeration. However, asymptotically most graphs do not result in any 3-manifold triangulation, which leads to significant "wasted time" in topological enumeration algorithms. Here we give a new algorithm to determine whether ...

Through computer enumeration with the aid of topological results, we catalogue all 18 closed non-orientable P^2-irreducible 3-manifolds that can be formed from at most eight tetrahedra. In addition we give an overview as to how the 100 resulting minimal triangulations are constructed. Observations and conjectures are drawn from the census data, and future potential for the non-orientable census is discussed. Some preliminary nine-tetrahedron results are also included.

In this thesis, we use normal surface theory to understand certain properties of minimal triangulations of compact orientable 3-manifolds. We describe the collapsing process of normal 2-spheres and disks. Using some geometrical constructions to take connected sums of triangulated 3-manifolds, we obtain the following result: given a minimal triangulation of a closed orientable 3-manifold M, it takes polynomial time in the number of tetrahedra to check if M is reducible or not.

Tight triangulations are exotic, but highly regular objects in combinatorial topology. A triangulation is tight if all its piecewise linear embeddings into a Euclidean space are as convex as allowed by the topology of the underlying manifold. Tight triangulations are conjectured to be strongly minimal, and proven to be so for dimensions $\leq 3$. However, in spite of substantial theoretical results about such triangulations, there are precious few examples. In fact, apart fro...

This survey gives a brief overview of theoretically and practically relevant algorithms to compute geodesic paths and distances on three-dimensional surfaces. The survey focuses on polyhedral three-dimensional surfaces.

It is well known that a three dimensional (closed, connected and compact) manifold is obtained by identifying boundary faces from a polyhedron P. The study of (\partial P)/~, the boundary \partial P with the polygonal faces identified in pairs leads us to the following conclusion: either a three dimensional manifold is homeomorphic to a sphere or to a polyhedron P with its boundary faces identified in pairs so that (\partial P)/~ is a finite number of internally flat complexe...

A mostly expository account of old questions about the relationship between polyhedra and topological manifolds. Topics are old topological results, new gauge theory results (with speculations about next directions), and history of the questions.

Any two geometric ideal triangulations of a cusped complete hyperbolic $3$-manifold $M$ are related by a sequence of Pachner moves through topological triangulations. We give a bound on the length of this sequence in terms of the total number of tetrahedra and a lower bound on dihedral angles. This leads to a naive but effective algorithm to check if two hyperbolic knots are equivalent, given geometric ideal triangulations of their complements. Given a geometric ideal triangu...