Heegaard splittings and group presentations
by
Youn W. Lee
University of Wisconsin-Parkside

Associated to a Heegaard splitting of a 3-manifold, there exists a natural presentation of the fundamental group of the manifold. We study such presentations of Heegaard splittings of the 3-spere. We also describe a correspondence between Heegaard splittings of the 3-sphere and collections of simple arcs in the 3-ball and show that a 2-handle sliding is equivalent to an arc sliding.

Date received: March 6, 1998

Copyright © 1998 by the author(s). The author(s) of this document and the organizers of the conference have granted their consent to include this abstract in Atlas Conferences Inc. Document # cabg-06.