Multisections and bridge positions in arbitrary dimensions

Abstract

Multisections were defined by Ben Aribi--Courte--Golla--Moussard as a way to decompose closed manifolds into $1$-handlebodies, which is a generalization of Heegaard splittings and trisections. Previously, their existence was only known in dimensions up to $5$. We show that multisections exist for closed manifolds in arbitrary dimensions. We also show that submanifolds of codimension at least $2$ in multisected manifolds can always be put into an appropriate bridge position, generalizing the existence result on bridge trisections in dimension $4$.

27 pages, 9 figures in color