Bitwist 3-manifolds preprint

Bitwist 3-manifolds

J. W. Cannon, W. J. Floyd, and W. R. Parry
June 10, 2008

Abstract

Our earlier twisted-face-pairing construction showed how to modify an arbitrary orientation-reversing face-pairing on a faceted 3-ball in a mechanical way so that the quotient is automatically a closed, orientable 3-manifold. The modifications were, in fact, parametrized by a finite set of positive integers, arbitrarily chosen, one integer for each edge class of the original face-pairing. This allowed us to find very simple face-pairing descriptions of many, though presumably not all, 3-manifolds.

Here we show how to modify the construction to allow negative parameters, as well as positive parameters, in the twisted-face-pairing construction. We call the modified construction the bitwist construction. We prove that all closed connected orientable 3-manifolds are bitwist manifolds. As with the twist construction, we analyze and describe the Heegaard splitting naturally associated with a bitwist description of a manifold.

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