Almost periodic flows on 3-manifolds (Q2464747)

A motivation of the paper is the following question: if a Riemannian 3-manifold \(M\) supports a non-trivial flow (\(\mathbb R\)-action) which is close to the identity at time one, is it true that \(M\) is Seifert fibered? The first main result of the paper states that such a closed irreducible Riemannian 3-manifold is Seifert fibered if the distance between a point \(x\) and its image at time one is always smaller than half the convexity radius of \(M\), and moreover the ``closed-up'' flow line of some point has infinite order in \(\pi_1(M)\) (the proof uses the Seifert fibered space theorem, by showing that \(\pi_1(M)\) contains an infinite cyclic normal subgroup). The author then goes on to define the notion of an almost periodic flow, compares it with some previous notion, and gives conditions under which a manifold supporting an almost periodic flow is Seifert fibered; this includes a result that \(\mathbb R^3\) does not support certain almost periodic flows (a 3-manifold supporting a fixed-point free periodic flow is Seifert fibered, and it is well-known that \(\mathbb R^3\) does not support such a flow).