Long-time behavior of 3-dimensional Ricci flow C: 3-manifold topology and combinatorics of simplicial complexes in 3-manifolds

In the third part of this series of papers, we establish several topological results that will become important for studying the long-time behavior of Ricci flows with surgery. In the first part of this paper we recall some elementary observations in the topology of 3-manifolds. The main part is devoted to the construction of certain simplicial complexes in a given 3-manifold that exhibit useful intersection properties with embedded, incompressible solid tori. This paper is purely topological in nature and Ricci flows will not be used.