Topological geodesics and virtual rigidity (Q5934077)

The authors introduce the notion of topological geodesics in 3-manifolds and prove that, under suitable hypotheses on the fundamental group, they play the same role of geodesics in negatively curved space. An embedded curve \(\gamma\) in a 3-manifold \(M\) is a topological geodesic if a component \(\widetilde \gamma\) (and, as a consequence, all components) of its inverse image in the universal cover \(\widetilde M\) is unknotted. The following results are established: (i) (existence) if \(M\) is an irreducible 3-manifold with \(\pi_1(M)\) word-hyperbolic (or semi-hyperbolic), then every conjugacy class in \(\pi_1(M)\) is represented by a topological geodesic; (ii) (uniqueness) if \(M\) is an irreducible 3-manifold, with \(\pi_1(M)\) word-hyperbolic and residually finite, and \(c\) and \(c'\) are homotopic topological geodesics in \(M\) representing a primitive class of \(\pi_1(M)\) (i.e., not a multiple of any other class), then there exists a finite cover \(M'\) of \(M\) such that \(c\) and \(c'\) lift to isotopic curves in \(M'\). As an application, two results concerning the virtual rigidity of 3-manifolds (i.e., pairs of homotopy equivalent manifolds have finite covers which are homeomorphic), are proved, under suitable hypotheses.