Essential open book foliations and fractional Dehn twist coefficient (Q522071)

A fundamental theorem of Giroux asserts that there is a correspondence between contact structures and open book decompositions on 3-manifolds. Moreover, contact structures induce singular foliations on embedded surfaces and this has led to the development of convex surface theory, one of the major tools in 3-dimensional contact topology. Analogously, intersection with the pages of an open book decomposition induces singular foliations on embedded surfaces and this approach has been exploited by the authors of the present paper in [Geom. Topol. 18, No. 3, 1581--1634 (2014; Zbl 1303.57012)] and subsequent papers. In fact they gave a definition of ``open book foliation'' and proved that any embedded surface in a given open book decomposition can be isotoped to meet those conditions. \textit{K. Honda} et al. [Invent. Math. 169, No. 2, 427--449 (2007; Zbl 1167.57008)] proved that a contact structure is tight if and only if the monodromy of the open book decomposition is right-veering and that the latter can be checked by using fractional Dehn twist coefficients. The paper under review develops techniques to compute the fractional Dehn twist coefficient \(c(\phi,C)\) for a monodromy \(\phi\) and a boundary component \(C\). Among the corollaries are estimates in various special situations. For example, assume that an incompressible surface of genus \(g\geq 1\) intersects the binding in \(2n>0\) points, then the absolute value of the fractional Dehn twist coefficient is bounded above by \(4+\left[\frac{4g-4}{n}\right]\). As a corollary they obtain that \(| c(\phi,C)| >3\) for every boundary component implies the manifold to be irreducible, and that \(\phi\) irreducible and \(| c(\phi,C)| >4\) for every boundary component implies the manifold to be atoroidal. There are many other applications.