On the subadditivity of Montesinos complexity of closed orientable 3-manifolds

Abstract

A filling Dehn sphere $\Sigma$ in a closed 3-manifold $M$ is a sphere transversely immersed in $M$ that defines a cell decomposition of $M$. Every closed 3-manifold has a filling Dehn sphere. The Montesinos complexity of a $3$-manifold $M$ is defined as the minimal number of triple points among all the filling Dehn spheres of $M$. A sharp upper bound for the Montesinos complexity of the connected sum of two 3-manifolds is given.