Notes on Basic 3-Manifold Topology

Sometime in the 1980's I started writing a book on 3-manifolds, but got sidetracked on the algebraic topology books described elsewhere on this website. The little that exists of the 3-manifolds book (see below for a table of contents) is rather unpolished and doesn't cover a lot of material, but it does contain a few things that may not be readily available elsewhere, including the elementary form of the Jaco-Shalen/Johannson torus decomposition theorem. So it seemed worthwhile to make this available electronically. However the reader should bear in mind that these pages are really just an early draft of the initial chapters of a real book on 3-manifolds, which I had originally hoped to write.

PDF file of the current version, last revised in 2023, 75 pages.


Chapter 1. Canonical Decomposition

1. Prime Decomposition.
2. Torus Decomposition.

Chapter 2. Special Classes of 3-Manifolds

1. Seifert Manifolds.
2. Torus Bundles and Semi-Bundles.

Chapter 3. Homotopy Properties

1. The Loop and Sphere Theorems.