Homotopy Motions of Surfaces in 3-Manifolds

Abstract We introduce the concept of a homotopy motion of a subset in a manifold and give a systematic study of homotopy motions of surfaces in closed orientable 3-manifolds. This notion arises from various natural problems in 3-manifold theory such as domination of manifold pairs, homotopical behavior of simple loops on a Heegaard surface and monodromies of virtual branched covering surface bundles associated with a Heegaard splitting.