Canonical decompositions of hyperbolic fibered two-bridge link complements (Q898522)

The work of \textit{D. B. A. Epstein} and \textit{R. C. Penner} tells us that every finite-volume cusped hyperbolic manifold admits a canonical decomposition into ideal polyhedra [J. Differ. Geom. 27, No. 1, 67--80 (1988; Zbl 0611.53036)], and it is well known that this decomposition, in the case of once-punctured torus bundles over the circle, is layered (according to a sequence of Whitehead moves between surface triangulations) with respect to the fiber structure [\textit{T. Jørgensen}, Lond. Math. Soc. Lect. Note Ser. 299, 183--207 (2003; Zbl 1061.30038)]. The main result of the present paper states that this phenomenon occurs more generally in a particular case: The canonical decompositions of hyperbolic fibered two-bridge link complements are layered triangulations with respect to the fiber structure. The author proves this result by combining two other results, the proofs of which form the bulk of the paper. The first is A'Campo's criterion for detecting fiberedness. Given an ideal triangulation \(\mathcal{D}\) of a finite-volume hyperbolic manifold \(M\), let \(\mathcal{F}\) be the 2-cell complex dual to \(\mathcal{D}\). A \textit{balanced} 1-cocycle \(\omega \in H^{1}(\mathcal{F}; \mathbb{Z})\) is a 1-cocycle that evaluates, for every vertex \(v \in \mathcal{F}\), positively for two oriented edges of \(\mathcal{F}\) emanating from \(v\) and negatively for (the other) two oriented edges emanating from \(v\). A'Campo's criterion for detecting fiberedness can then be stated as follows: Theorem: If \(p: M \to S^{1}\) is continuous, \(p^{*}(1) \in H^{1}(\mathcal{F}, \mathbb{Z})\) is primitive, and there exists a balanced 1-cocycle \(\omega\) representing \(p^{*}(1)\), then there is a fibration \(p_{\omega}: M \to S^{1}\) that is homotopic to \(p\), and the ideal triangulation \(\mathcal{D}\) is layered with respect this fibration. \textit{N. A'Campo} has experimented with a certain harmonic 1-cocycle (called the \textit{canonical 1-cocycle}) in detecting fiberedness of many links [Publ. Math., Inst. Hautes Étud. Sci. 88, 171--180 (1998; Zbl 0960.57008)] and, according to the author, has in conversation speculated that, in the case of hyperbolic fibered two-bridge links, these canonical 1-cocycles detect fiberedness by virtue of being balanced. This is the second theorem required to prove the main result of the paper: The canonical 1-cocycle of a hyperbolic two-bridge link is balanced.