On Thurston's Euler class-one conjecture

DOI10.4310/ACTA.2020.V225.N2.A3MaRDI QIDQ2663757zbMATH OpenOpenAlexWikidataFDO

Authors Mehdi Yazdi

Publication date 19 April 2021

Published in Acta Mathematica (Search for Journal in Brave)

Full work available at URL https://arxiv.org/abs/1603.03822

Mathematics Subject Classification ID

Dynamical systems of geometric origin and hyperbolicity (geodesic and horocycle flows, etc.) (37D40) Foliations (differential geometric aspects) (53C12) Foliations in differential topology; geometric theory (57R30)

Abstract: In 1976, Thurston proved that taut foliations on closed hyperbolic 3-manifolds have Euler class of norm at most one, and conjectured that conversely, any integral second cohomology class with norm equal to one is the Euler class of a taut foliation. This is the first from a series of two papers that together give a negative answer to Thurston's conjecture. Here counterexamples have been constructed conditional on the fully marked surface theorem. In the second paper, joint with David Gabai, a proof of the fully marked surface theorem is given.

Review text

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.

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Cited in

(6)

• On the thin-shell conjecture for the Schatten classes
• The fully marked surface theorem
• On Thurston's inequality for spinnable foliations
• On Thurston's construction of a surjective homomorphism \(H_{2n + 1} (B{\Gamma}_n, {\mathbb Z}) \rightarrow {\mathbb R}\)
• Thurston norm and Euler classes of tight contact structures
• Euler class of taut foliations and Dehn filling

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