Goeritz Groups of Bridge Decompositions

Abstract

Abstract For a bridge decomposition of a link in the $3$-sphere, we define the Goeritz group to be the group of isotopy classes of orientation-preserving homeomorphisms of the $3$-sphere that preserve each of the bridge sphere and link setwise. After describing basic properties of this group, we discuss the asymptotic behavior of the minimal pseudo-Anosov entropies. We then give an application to the asymptotic behavior of the minimal entropies for the original Goeritz groups of Heegaard splittings of the $3$-sphere and the real projective space.