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Spherical splitting of 3-orbifolds
The famous Haken-Kneser-Milnor theorem states that every 3-manifold can be expressed in a unique way as a connected sum of prime 3-manifolds. The analogous statement for 3-orbifolds has been part of the folklore for several years, and it was commonly believed that slight variations on the argument used for manifolds would be sufficient to establish it. We demonstrate in this paper that this is not the case, proving that the apparently natural notion of ``essential'' system of spherical 2-orbifolds is not adequate in this context. We also show that the statement itself of the theorem must be given in a substantially different way. We then prove the theorem in full detail, using a certain notion of ``efficient splitting system.'
Combinatorial and geometric methods in topology. With an appendix by Damian Heard and Ekaterina Pervova
Starting from the (apparently) elementary problem of deciding how many different topological spaces can be obtained by gluing together in pairs the faces of an octahedron, we will describe the central role played by hyperbolic geometry within three-dimensional topology. We will also point out the striking difference with the two-dimensional case, and we will review some of the results of the combinatorial and computational approach to three-manifolds developed by different mathematicians over the last several years
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