A foliation of \({\mathbb{R}}^ 3\) and other punctured 3-manifolds by circles (Q1263845)

About 14 years ago, D. B. A. Epstein posed the question: Can \({\mathbb{R}}^ 3\) be foliated by circles? The answer has been stubbornly elusive. In this paper, the author gives an elegant construction of such a foliation. This foliation is not of class \(C^ 1\), but it is differentiable. That is, the leaves are smooth, the tangent distribution is continuous, and the foliation charts can be chosen so that the coordinate changes are homeomorphisms having a derivative at each point. The author calls this a \(C^{1-}\)-foliation. Of course, the foliation has a ``bad set'' \(B_ 1\) where the length-of-leaf function V is not locally bounded. But \(V| B_ 1\) is locally bounded, so the Epstein hierarchy ends at \(B_ 1\). This construction is also used to prove that, if the 3-manifold M admits a \(C^{1-}\)-foliation by circles, so does \(M\setminus \{p\}\), where p is an interior point of M.