A disjoint disks property for 3-manifolds

Abstract

We show that the map separation property (MSP), a concept due to H.W. Lambert and R.B. Sher, is an appropriate analogue of J.W. Cannon’s disjoint disks property (DDP) for the class C of compact generalized 3-manifolds with zero-dimensional singular set, modulo the Poincaré conjecture. Our main result is that the Poincaré conjecture (in dimension three) is equivalent to the conjecture that every Xϵ C with the MSP is a topological 3-manifold.