%0 Journal Article %T Genus two 3-manifolds are built from handle number one pieces %A Eric Sedgwick %J Mathematics %D 1998 %I arXiv %R 10.2140/agt.2001.1.763 %X Let M be a closed, irreducible, genus two 3-manifold, and F a maximal collection of pairwise disjoint, closed, orientable, incompressible surfaces embedded in M. Then each component manifold M_i of M-F has handle number at most one, i.e. admits a Heegaard splitting obtained by attaching a single 1-handle to one or two components of boundary M_i. This result also holds for a decomposition of M along a maximal collection of incompressible tori. %U http://arxiv.org/abs/math/9811029v2