COMPUTING MATVEEV'S COMPLEXITY VIA CRYSTALLIZATION THEORY: THE BOUNDARY CASE

Abstract

The notion of Gem–Matveev complexity (GM-complexity) has been introduced within crystallization theory, as a combinatorial method to estimate Matveev's complexity of closed 3-manifolds; it yielded upper bounds for interesting classes of such manifolds. In this paper, we extend the definition to the case of non-empty boundary and prove that for each compact irreducible and boundary-irreducible 3-manifold it coincides with the modified Heegaard complexity introduced by Cattabriga, Mulazzani and Vesnin. Moreover, via GM-complexity, we obtain an estimation of Matveev's complexity for all Seifert 3-manifolds with base 𝔻2 and two exceptional fibers and, therefore, for all torus knot complements.