Detection of incompressible surfaces in hyperbolic punctured torus bundles (Q649026)

There is a remarkable method to construct an incompressible surface in a \(3\)-manifold from an ideal point of the character variety of the manifold introduced by \textit{M. Culler} and \textit{P. B. Shalen} [``Varieties of group representations and splittings of 3-manifolds'', Ann. Math. (2) 117, 109--146 (1983; Zbl 0529.57005)]. Conversely, if the boundary slope of an incompressible surface can be found by the Culler-Shalen construction, then it is said to be detected. In addition, if there is no closed incompressible surface which comes from the same ideal point, then the slope is said to be strongly detected. For example, not all incompressible surfaces in \(2\)-bridge knot complements are detected as shown by \textit{T. Ohtsuki} [``Ideal points and incompressible surfaces in two-bridge knot complements'', J. Math. Soc. Japan 46, No. 1, 51--87 (1994; Zbl 0837.57006)]. Also, \textit{S. Schanuel} and \textit{X. Zhang} [``Detection of essential surfaces in 3-manifolds with \(SL_2\)-trees'', Math. Ann. 320, No. 1, 149--165 (2001; Zbl 0982.57008)] and \textit{E. Chesebro} and \textit{S. Tillmann} [``Not all boundary slopes are strongly detected by the character variety'', Commun. Anal. Geom. 15, No. 4, 695--723 (2007; Zbl 1152.57002)] gave many examples of boundary slopes which are not strongly detected. The purpose of the paper under review is to show that all non fiber and non semi-fiber incompressible surfaces in hyperbolic punctured torus bundles over the circle are detected by the character variety. This together with the classification of incompressible surfaces in punctured torus bundles due to \textit{W. Floyd} and \textit{A. E. Hatcher} [``Incompressible surfaces in punctured-torus bundles'', Topology Appl. 13, 263--282 (1982; Zbl 0493.57004)] implies that all boundary slopes of such surfaces are strongly detected. The argument is based on the translation between Floyd-Hatcher's construction and another construction by \textit{T. Yoshida} [``On ideal points of deformation curves of hyperbolic 3-manifolds with one cusp'', Topology 30, No. 2, 155--170 (1991; Zbl 0726.57011)].