Minimal Entropy of $3$-manifolds

Abstract

We compute the Minimal Entropy of every closed, orientable $3$-manifold, showing that its cube equals the sum of the cubes of the minimal entropies of each hyperbolic component arising from the $JSJ$ decomposition of each prime summand. As a consequence we show that the cube of the Minimal Entropy is additive with respect to both the prime and the $JSJ$ decomposition, thus concluding that for closed orientable $3$-manifolds the cube of the Minimal Entropy is proportional to the simplicity volume. This answers a conjecture asked by Anderson and Paternain for irreducible manifolds.