The universal cover of 3-manifolds built from injective handlebodies is $\mathbb R^3$

James Coffey

Published 2006-01-30, updated 2007-01-31Version 3

This paper gives a proof that the universal cover of a closed 3-manifold built from three $\pi_1$-injective handlebodies is homeomorphic to $\mathbb R^3$. This construction is an extension to handlebodies of the conditions for gluing of three solid tori to produce non-Haken Seifert fibered manifolds with infinite fundamental group. This class of manifolds has been shown to contain non-Haken non-Seifert fibered manifolds.