$3$-manifolds admitting locally large distance $2$ Heegaard splittings

Abstract

From the view of Heegaard splitting, it is known that if a closed orientable 3-manifold admits a distance at least three Heegaard splitting, then it is hyperbolic. However, for a closed orientable 3-manifold admitting only distance at most two Heegaard splittings, there are examples shows that it could be reducible, Seifert, toroidal or hyperbolic. According to Thurston's Geometrization conjecture, the most important piece of eight geometries is hyperbolic. Thus to read out a hyperbolic 3-manifold from a distance two Heegaard splittings is critical in studying Heegaard splittings. Inspired by the construction of hyperbolic 3-manifolds with a distance two Heegaard splitting [Qiu, Zou and Guo, Pacific J. Math. 275 (2015), no. 1, 231-255], we introduce the definition of a locally large geodesic in curve complex and furthermore the locally large distance two Heegaard splitting. Then we prove that if a 3-manifold admits a locally large distance two Heegaard splitting, then it is a hyperbolic manifold or an amalgamation of a hyperbolic manifold and a seifert manifold along an incompressible torus, i.e., almost hyperbolic, while the example in Section 3 shows that there is a non hyperbolic 3-manifold in this case. After examining those non hyperbolic cases, we give a sufficient and necessary condition for a hyperbolic 3-manifold when it admits a locally large distance two Heegaard splitting.