Small knots and large handle additions

Abstract

We construct a hyperbolic 3-manifold $M$ (with $\partial M$ totally geodesic) which contains no essential closed surfaces, but for any even integer $g> 0$ there are infinitely many separating slopes $r$ on $\partial M$ so that $M[r]$, the 3-manifold obtained by attaching 2-handle to $M$ along $r$, contains an essential separating closed surface of genus $g$ and is still hyperbolic. The result contrasts sharply with those known finiteness results for the cases $g=0,1$. Our 3-manifold $M$ is the complement of a simple small knot in a handlebody.