Every closed orientable surface S has the following property: any two connected covers of S of the same degree are homeomorphic (as spaces). In this, paper we give a complete classification of compact 3-manifolds with empty or toroidal boundary which have the above property. We also discuss related group-theoretic questions.
Let $N$ be a prime 3-manifold that is not a closed graph manifold. Building on a result of Hongbin Sun and using a result of Asaf Hadari we show that for every $kinBbb{N}$ there exists a finite cover $tilde{N}$ of $N$ such that $|operatorname{Tor} H_1(tilde{N};Bbb{Z})|>k$.
For a closed 3-manifold $M$ in a certain class, we give a presentation of the cellular chain complex of the universal cover of $M$. The class includes all surface bundles, some surgeries of knots in $S^3$, some cyclic branched cover of $S^3$, and some Seifert manifolds. In application, we establish a formula for calculating the linking form of a cyclic branched cover of $S^3$, and develop procedures of computing some Dijkgraaf-Witten invariants.
In this paper we study the (equivariant) topological types of a class of 3-dimensional closed manifolds (i.e., 3-dimensional small covers), each of which admits a locally standard $(mathbb{Z}_2)^3$-action such that its orbit space is a simple convex 3-polytope. We introduce six equivariant operations on 3-dimensional small covers. These six operations are interesting because of their combinatorial natures. Then we show that each 3-dimensional small cover can be obtained from $mathbb{R}P^3$ and $S^1timesmathbb{R}P^2$ with certain $(mathbb{Z}_2)^3$-actions under these six operations. As an application, we classify all 3-dimensional small covers up to $({Bbb Z}_2)^3$-equivariant unoriented cobordism.
The paper contains a new proof that a complete, non-compact hyperbolic $3$-manifold $M$ with finite volume contains an immersed, closed, quasi-Fuchsian surface.
As a generalization of Davis-Januszkiewicz theory, there is an essential link between locally standard $(Z_2)^n$-actions (or $T^n$-actions) actions and nice manifolds with corners, so that a class of nicely behaved equivariant cut-and-paste operations on locally standard actions can be carried out in step on nice manifolds with corners. Based upon this, we investigate what kinds of closed manifolds admit locally standard $(Z_2)^n$-actions; especially for the 3-dimensional case. Suppose $M$ is an orientable closed connected 3-manifold. When $H_1(M;Z_2)=0$, it is shown that $M$ admits a locally standard $(Z_2)^3$-action if and only if $M$ is homeomorphic to a connected sum of 8 copies of some $Z_2$-homology sphere $N$, and if further assuming $M$ is irreducible, then $M$ must be homeomorphic to $S^3$. In addition, the argument is extended to rational homology 3-sphere $M$ with $H_1(M;Z_2) cong Z_2$ and an additional assumption that the $(Z_2)^3$-action has a fixed point.