Experiments with the Census

A census is presented of all closed non-orientable 3-manifold triangulations formed from at most seven tetrahedra satisfying the additional constraints of minimality and P^2-irreducibility. The eight different 3-manifolds represented by these 41 different triangulations are identified and described in detail, with particular attention paid to the recurring combinatorial structures that are shared amongst the different triangulations. Using these recurring structures, the resu...

We describe theoretical backgrounds for a computer program that recognizes all closed orientable 3-manifolds up to complexity 8. The program can treat also not necessarily closed 3-manifolds of bigger complexities, but here some unrecognizable (by the program) 3-manifolds may occur.

A typical census of 3-manifolds contains all manifolds (under various constraints) that can be triangulated with at most n tetrahedra. Al- though censuses are useful resources for mathematicians, constructing them is difficult: the best algorithms to date have not gone beyond n = 12. The underlying algorithms essentially (i) enumerate all relevant 4-regular multigraphs on n nodes, and then (ii) for each multigraph G they enumerate possible 3-manifold triangulations with G as ...

Regina is a software package for studying 3-manifold triangulations and normal surfaces. It includes a graphical user interface and Python bindings, and also supports angle structures, census enumeration, combinatorial recognition of triangulations, and high-level functions such as 3-sphere recognition, unknot recognition and connected sum decomposition. This paper brings 3-manifold topologists up-to-date with Regina as it appears today, and documents for the first time in ...

We call a 3-manifold Platonic if it can be decomposed into isometric Platonic solids. Generalizing an earlier publication by the author and others where this was done in case of the hyperbolic ideal tetrahedron, we give a census of hyperbolic Platonic manifolds and all of their Platonic tessellations. For the octahedral case, we also identify which manifolds are complements of an augmented knotted trivalent graph and give the corresponding link. A (small version of) the Plato...

Certain fibered hyperbolic 3-manifolds admit a $\mathit{\text{layered veering triangulation}}$, which can be constructed algorithmically given the stable lamination of the monodromy. These triangulations were introduced by Agol in 2011, and have been further studied by several others in the years since. We obtain experimental results which shed light on the combinatorial structure of veering triangulations, and its relation to certain topological invariants of the underlying ...

We study random elements of subgroups (and cosets) of the mapping class group of a closed hyperbolic surface, in part through the properties of their mapping tori. In particular, we study the distribution of the homology of the mapping torus (with rational, integer, and finite field coefficients, the hyperbolic volume (whenever the manifold is hyperbolic), the dilatation of the monodromy, the injectivity radius, and the bottom eigenvalue of the Laplacian on these mapping tori...

Starting from the (apparently) elementary problem of deciding how many different topological spaces can be obtained by gluing together in pairs the faces of an octahedron, we will describe the central role played by hyperbolic geometry within three-dimensional topology. We will also point out the striking difference with the two-dimensional case, and we will review some of the results of the combinatorial and computational approach to three-manifolds developed by different ma...

From its creation in 1989 through subsequent extensions, the widely-used "SnapPea census" now aims to represent all cusped finite-volume hyperbolic 3-manifolds that can be obtained from <= 8 ideal tetrahedra. Its construction, however, has relied on inexact computations and some unproven (though reasonable) assumptions, and so its completeness was never guaranteed. For the first time, we prove here that the census meets its aim: we rigorously certify that every ideal 3-manifo...

A well-known question asks whether any two non-isometric finite volume hyperbolic 3-manifolds are distinguished from each other by the finite quotients of their fundamental groups. At present, this has been proved only when one of the manifolds is a once-punctured torus bundle over the circle. We give substantial computational evidence in support of a positive answer, by showing that no two manifolds in the SnapPea census of 72 942 finite volume hyperbolic 3-manifolds have th...