Fibered faces, veering triangulations, and the arc complex (Q1688815)

Let \(M\) be a hyperbolic \(3\)-manifold fibering over the circle with fiber \(S\). Assume that all singularities of the invariant foliations for the pseudo-Anosov monodromy are at punctures of \(S\). The cohomology class dual to \(S\) is in the cone of a top-dimensional face \({\mathcal F}\) of the polyhedral Thurston norm unit ball and each integral class in this cone corresponds to a fiber of some fibration, see [\textit{W. P. Thurston}, Mem. Am. Math. Soc. 339, 99--130 (1986; Zbl 0585.57006)]. The paper assumes \(M\) to be fixed, but the fibration to be variable. Associated to each fibration there is Agol's veering triangulation, which actually depends only on \({\mathcal F}\) and not on the specific fibration. According to \textit{F. Guéritaud} [J. Topol. 9, No. 3, 957--983 (2016; Zbl 1354.57025)] it is constructed by decomposing \(S\) into maximal immersed rectangles with edges along leaf segments of the invariant foliations, thus containing one singularity in each of its four sides, then connecting these four ideal points and thickening in the direction transverse to \(S\), thus getting a triangulation of \(S\times{\mathbb R}\), which descends to a triangulation of \(M\). The paper under review shows that the veering triangulation ``recovers a number of aspects of curve and arc complexes in a fairly concrete way''. For example, the authors prove that the arcs of the veering triangulation form a geodesically connected subset of the curve and arc graph. The main theorems of the paper concern the function which to every essential subsurface \(Y\subset S\) associates \(d_Y(\lambda^+,\lambda^-)\), that is, the distance in the curve and arc complex of \(Y\) between the lifts of the stable and instable lamination to the cover of \(S\) homeomorphic to \(Y\). Theorem 1 says that \(d_Y(\lambda^+,\lambda^-)\) can be estimated in terms of the number \(|\tau|\) of tetrahedra in the veering triangulation by the inequalities \(d_Y(\lambda^+,\lambda^-)-10<|\tau|\) if \(Y\) is an annulus, and \(3|\chi(Y)|(d_Y(\lambda^+,\lambda^-)-8)<|\tau|\) otherwise. Theorem 2 asserts the following dichotomy: if \(S\) and \(F\) are fibers in the same same fibered face \({\mathcal F}\), then a subsurface \(Y\subset F\) is either isotopic along the pseudo-Anosov flow to a subsurface of \(S\) or one has an inequality \(d_Y(\lambda^+,\lambda^-)\leq 3|\chi(S)| +\beta\) with \(\beta=10\) if \(Y\) is an annulus and \(\beta=8\) otherwise.