Angle structures and normal surfaces.pdfVIP

a r X i v : m a t h / 0 5 1 0 5 3 7 v 2 [ m a t h .G T ] 5 J u n 2 0 0 6 ANGLE STRUCTURES AND NORMAL SURFACES FENG LUO AND STEPHAN TILLMANN Abstract. Let M be the interior of a compact 3–manifold with non–empty boundary, and T be an ideal (topological) triangulation of M. This paper de- scribes necessary and sufficient conditions for the existence of angle structures, semi–angle structures and generalised angle structures on (M ;T ) respectively in terms of a generalised Euler characteristic function on the solution space of normal surface theory of (M ; T ). This extends previous work of Kang and Ru- binstein, and is itself generalised to a more general setting for 3–dimensional pseudo-manifolds. 1. Introduction Let M be the interior of a compact 3–manifold with non–empty boundary, and T be an ideal (topological) triangulation of M. Such a triangulation always exists and is not unique. This paper addresses the question whether angle structures on the pair (M ; T ) exist. The main results give necessary and sufficient conditions on the existence of an angle structure, a semi–angle structure and a generalised angle structure respectively in terms of a generalised Euler characteristic function on the solution space of normal surface theory. Our main results are based on and generalise work of Kang and Rubinstein [8]. Angle structures have first been studied by Casson (see [9]) and Rivin [10], and provide a linear analogue of ideal hyperbolic triangulations. An angle structure of an ideal triangulation is an assignment of a real number, termed angle, in the range (0, π) to each edge of each ideal tetrahedron such that the sum of angles at each vertex of each tetrahedron is π, and such that around an edge of T the sum of angles is 2π. Casson and Rivin observed that the existence of an angle structure implies that all boundary components of M are tori or Klein bottles, and that M is irreducible and atoroidal. For example, ifM admits a complete hyperbolic structur