On Thurston's Euler class-one conjecture (Q2663757)

A 2-dimensional transversely oriented foliation of a compact, orientable 3-manifold \(M\) is called taut if every leaf has a closed transversal and manifolds admitting taut foliations have properties of hyperbolic manifolds. For any compact, orientable 3-manifold \(M,\) Thurston defined natural seminorms on the second homology groups \(H_{2}(M)\) and \(H_{2}(M,\partial M),\) now known as Thurston norm, which naturally defines dual norms on the dual vector spaces \(H^{2}(M)\) and \(H^{2}(M,\partial M).\) In the present paper it assumed that \(M\) is closed and irreducible. For a 2-dimensional transversely oriented foliation \(\mathcal{F}\) of \(M\) the Euler class of the tangent bundle to the foliation \(\mathcal{F}\) is denoted by \(e(\mathcal{F})\in H^{2}(M).\) Thus, the dual Thurston norm of the Euler class is defined and denoted by \(x^{\ast }(e(\mathcal{F})).\) It is also valid that \(x^{\ast}(e(\mathcal{F}))\leq1.\) The Euler class-one conjecture (Thurston 1976) can be stated as follows: Let \(M\) be a closed, orientable, irreducible and atoroidal 3-manifold and let \(a\in H^{2}(M,\mathbb{Z})\) be any integral class with \(x^{\ast}(a)=1.\) Then, there is a taut foliation \(\mathcal{F}\) on \(M\) whose Euler class is equal to \(a.\) The main theorem of the present theorem states that there are infinitely many closed hyperbolic 3-manifolds for which the Euler class-one conjecture does not hold.