Modulo 2 counting of Klein-bottle leaves in smooth taut foliations (Q1673634)

Let \({\mathcal L}\) be a co-oriented 2-dimensional foliation of a \(3\)-manifold \(Y\). It was proved by \textit{C. Bonatti} and \textit{S. Firmo} [Ann. Sci. Éc. Norm. Supér. (4) 27, No. 4, 407--461 (1994; Zbl 0828.57022)] that a generic perturbation destroys all closed leaves of genus bigger than \(1\). The paper under review shows that this is not the case for Klein bottle leaves. (The case of torus leaves remains open.) For a homology class \(A\) the foliation is called \(A\)-admissible if every Klein bottle leaf in the class \(A\) has nontrivial linear holonomy. The main result of the paper under review is the following. Let \({\mathcal L}_s\) be a smooth family of co-orientable, taut foliations. Assume that \({\mathcal L}_0\) and \({\mathcal L}_1\) are \(A\)-admissible for a homology class \(A\), then the number of Klein bottle leaves in the class \(A\) has the same parity for both foliations. In particular, if an \(A\)-admissible, co-orientable, taut foliation has an odd number of Klein bottle leaves in the class \(A\), then this is true for all deformations through taut foliations. Somewhat surprisingly, the proof of this result uses symplectic geometry and pseudoholomorphic curves, namely the deformation of symplectic structures on \(M\times\mathbb R\) corresponding to the symplectizations of (lifts to the orientable double cover of) the deformed taut foliations, where the Klein bottle leaves correspond to pseudoholomorphic tori, whose homology class is multiplied by \(-1\) under the action of the deck transformation of the double cover. The main technical result is then that the relevant moduli spaces of pseudoholomorphic tori form the boundary of a 1-dimensional manifold and thus have the same parity.