Homology of curves and surfaces in closed hyperbolic 3-manifolds (Q903928)

Integral homology classes of manifolds can be represented by (not necessarily connected) submanifolds. When the ambient manifold has a geometric structure it is natural to ask for more. In the context of hyperbolic three-manifolds the best case scenario is to be able to represent a class by a locally totally geodesic submanifold; however, for classes of degree 2 this is not possible in general. In the present paper the authors show that one can still represent a suitable multiple of an integral homology class by a quasi-Fuchsian (in particular connected) surface (whose lift to hyperbolic space bounds a quasi-circle -- image of a conformal circle by a quasi-conformal homeomorphism -- on the boundary at infinity). While not as nice as locally totally geodesic surfaces these still have good properties: for example they always can be lifted to embedded surfaces in a finite cover, as was proven by I. Agol (this was the last step in the proof of the Virtually Haken conjecture, building on work of D. Wise and \textit{J. Kahn} and \textit{V. Markovic} [Ann. Math. (2) 175, No. 3, 1127--1190 (2012; Zbl 1254.57014)]). The authors also prove that if a collection of non-null-homotopic closed curves maps to a torsion class in the first homology group then in a finite cover it has a lift that bounds a quasi-fuchsian surface. Both results are a consequence of a more general result. The proof of this result builds on the work of Kahn and Markovic alluded to above (note that this work alone is sufficient to deduce a version of the first corollary: any 2-homology class can be represented by a collection of quasi-Fuchsian surfaces).