Normal surface

In mathematics, a normal surface is a surface inside a triangulated 3-manifold that intersects each tetrahedron so that each component of intersection is a triangle or a quad (see figure). A triangle cuts off a vertex of the tetrahedron while a quad separates pairs of vertices. A normal surface may have many components of intersection, called normal disks, with one tetrahedron, but no two normal disks can be quads that separate different pairs of vertices since that would lead to the surface self-intersecting.