In topology, an area of mathematics, the virtually Haken conjecture states that every compact, orientable, irreducible three-dimensional manifold with infinite fundamental group is virtually Haken. That is, it has a finite cover (a covering space with a finite-to-one covering map) that is a Haken manifold.
After the proof of the geometrization conjecture by Perelman, the conjecture was only open for hyperbolic 3-manifolds.
The conjecture is usually attributed to Friedhelm Waldhausen in a paper from 1968, although he did not formally state it. This problem is formally stated as Problem 3.2 in Kirby's problem list.
A proof of the conjecture was announced on March 12, 2012 by Ian Agol in a seminar lecture he gave at the Institut Henri Poincaré. The proof appeared shortly thereafter in a preprint which was eventually published in Documenta Mathematica. The proof was obtained via a strategy by previous work of Daniel Wise and collaborators, relying on actions of the fundamental group on certain auxiliary spaces (CAT(0) cube complexes, also known as median graphs) It used as an essential ingredient the freshly-obtained solution to the surface subgroup conjecture by Jeremy Kahn and Vladimir Markovic. Other results which are directly used in Agol's proof include the Malnormal Special Quotient Theorem of Wise and a criterion of Nicolas Bergeron and Wise for the cubulation of groups.
In 2018 related results were obtained by Piotr Przytycki and Daniel Wise proving that mixed 3-manifolds are also virtually special, that is they can be cubulated into a cube complex with a finite cover where all the hyperplanes are embedded which by the previous mentioned work can be made virtually Haken.
See also
Notes
- Waldhausen, Friedhelm (1968). "On irreducible 3-manifolds which are sufficiently large". Annals of Mathematics. 87 (1): 56–88. doi:10.2307/1970594. JSTOR 1970594. MR 0224099.
- Agol, Ian (2013). "The virtual Haken Conjecture". Doc. Math. 18. With an appendix by Ian Agol, Daniel Groves, and Jason Manning: 1045–1087. doi:10.4171/dm/421. MR 3104553. S2CID 255586740.
- Haglund, Frédéric; Wise, Daniel (2012). "A combination theorem for special cube complexes". Annals of Mathematics. 176 (3): 1427–1482. doi:10.4007/annals.2012.176.3.2. MR 2979855.
- Kahn, Jeremy; Markovic, Vladimir (2012). "Immersing almost geodesic surfaces in a closed hyperbolic three manifold". Annals of Mathematics. 175 (3): 1127–1190. arXiv:0910.5501. doi:10.4007/annals.2012.175.3.4. MR 2912704. S2CID 32593851.
- Kahn, Jeremy; Markovic, Vladimir (2012). "Counting essential surfaces in a closed hyperbolic three-manifold". Geometry & Topology. 16 (1): 601–624. arXiv:1012.2828. doi:10.2140/gt.2012.16.601. MR 2916295.
- Daniel T. Wise, The structure of groups with a quasiconvex hierarchy, https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B45cNx80t5-2NTU0ZTdhMmItZTIxOS00ZGUyLWE0YzItNTEyYWFiMjczZmIz/edit?pli=1
- Bergeron, Nicolas; Wise, Daniel T. (2012). "A boundary criterion for cubulation". American Journal of Mathematics. 134 (3): 843–859. arXiv:0908.3609. doi:10.1353/ajm.2012.0020. MR 2931226. S2CID 14128842.
- Przytycki, Piotr; Wise, Daniel (2017-10-19). "Mixed 3-manifolds are virtually special". Journal of the American Mathematical Society. 31 (2): 319–347. arXiv:1205.6742. doi:10.1090/jams/886. ISSN 0894-0347. S2CID 39611341.
- "Piotr Przytycki and Daniel Wise receive 2022 Moore Prize". American Mathematical Society.
References
- Dunfield, Nathan; Thurston, William (2003), "The virtual Haken conjecture: experiments and examples", Geometry and Topology, 7: 399–441, arXiv:math/0209214, doi:10.2140/gt.2003.7.399, MR 1988291, S2CID 6265421.
- Kirby, Robion (1978), "Problems in low dimensional manifold theory.", Algebraic and geometric topology (Proc. Sympos. Pure Math., Stanford Univ., Stanford, Calif., 1976), vol. 7, pp. 273–312, ISBN 9780821867891, MR 0520548.
External links
- Klarreich, Erica (2012-10-02). "Getting Into Shapes: From Hyperbolic Geometry to Cube Complexes and Back". Quanta Magazine.
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