Knots and minimal flows on 3-manifolds (Q1897852)

A flow \(\phi : \mathbb{R} \times M \to M\) on a smooth compact Riemannian 3-manifold \(M\) is minimal if the closure of each semitrajectory starting at an arbitrary point of \(M\) is equal to \(M\). The main theorem states that, for such a flow of class \(C^1\) and any two points \(p\) and \(q\) in \(M\) which are sufficiently close, the simple closed curve \(\Gamma\) formed by an arc of a trajectory of the flow connecting \(p\) and \(q\) and a geodesic arc orthogonal to the flow at \(p\) is a nontrivial prime knot in \(M\). This is motivated by the open problem of the existence of a minimal flow on the 3-sphere \(S^3\), more precisely to find an obstruction to the existence of such a flow (so one would like to show that \(\Gamma\) cannot be prime in the case of the 3-sphere). Note that the Seifert conjecture claims that any flow on \(S^3\) must have a compact trajectory, and that a minimal \(C^r\) flow on \(S^3\) would be a counterexample to this conjecture (such counterexamples are known for \(r = 1\) and 2). For the proof it is shown that the existence of a certain type of bidimensional foliation on the complement of a solid torus (a regular neighbourhood of \(\Gamma\)) implies that the solid torus is prime in \(M\). The minimality of the flow then makes it possible to use this result.