Category Archives: 3-manifolds

Hyperbolic Geometry Notes #5 – Mostow Rigidity

1. Mostow Rigidity For hyperbolic surfaces, Moduli space is quite large and complicated. However, in three dimensions Moduli space is trivial: Theorem 1 If is a homotopy equivalence of closed hyperbolic manifolds with , then is homotopic to an isometry. … Continue reading

Posted in 3-manifolds, Groups, Hyperbolic geometry, Uncategorized | 3 Comments

Knots with small rational genus

I recently uploaded a paper to the arXiv entitled Knots with small rational genus, joint with Cameron Gordon. The genesis of this paper was a couple of nice (and related) talks at Caltech by Matthew Hedden and Jake Rasmussen in … Continue reading

Posted in 3-manifolds, Hyperbolic geometry, Knot theory | Tagged , , , , , , | 2 Comments

Quasimorphisms from knot invariants

Last week, Michael Brandenbursky from the Technion gave a talk at Caltech on an interesting connection between knot theory and quasimorphisms. Michael’s paper on this subject may be obtained from the arXiv. Recall that given a group , a quasimorphism … Continue reading

Posted in 3-manifolds, Groups | Tagged , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

Second variation formula for minimal surfaces

If is a smooth function on a manifold , and is a critical point of , recall that the Hessian is the quadratic form on (in local co-ordinates, the coefficients of the Hessian are the second partial derivatives of at … Continue reading

Posted in 3-manifolds, Surfaces | Tagged , , , , , , , | 11 Comments

Surface subgroups – more details from Jeremy Kahn

Jeremy Kahn kindly sent me a more detailed overview of his argument with Vlad Markovic, that I blogged earlier about here (also see Jesse Johnson’s blog for other commentary). With his permission, this is reproduced below in its entirety. Editorial … Continue reading

Posted in 3-manifolds, Ergodic Theory, Surfaces | Tagged , , , | 4 Comments

Surface subgroups in hyperbolic 3-manifolds

I just learned from Jesse Johnson’s blog that Vlad Markovic and Jeremy Kahn have announced a proof of the surface subgroup conjecture, that every complete hyperbolic -manifold contains a closed -injective surface. Equivalently, contains a closed surface subgroup. Apparently, Jeremy … Continue reading

Posted in 3-manifolds, Ergodic Theory, Surfaces | Tagged , , , , , , , , | 10 Comments

The topological Cauchy-Schwarz inequality

I recently made the final edits to my paper “Positivity of the universal pairing in 3 dimensions”, written jointly with Mike Freedman and Kevin Walker, to appear in Jour. AMS. This paper is inspired by questions that arise in the … Continue reading

Posted in 3-manifolds, TQFT | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 3 Comments