This article is based on the methods developed in [AGG]. We construct a complex hyperbolic structure on a trivial disc bundle over a closed orientable surface $Σ$ (of genus 2) thus solving a long standing problem in complex hyperbolic geometry (see [Gol1, p. 583] and [Sch, p. 14]). This example answers also [Eli, Open Question 8.1] if a trivial circle bundle over a closed surface of genus >1 admits a holomorphically fillable contact structure. The constructed example M satisfies the relation $2(χ+e)=3τ$ which is necessary for the existence of a holomorphic section of the bundle, where $χ=χΣ$ stands for the Euler characteristic of $Σ$, e=eM, for the Euler number of the bundle, and $τ$, for the Toledo invariant. (The relation is also valid for the series of examples constructed in [AGG].) Open question: Does there exist a holomorphic section of the bundle M?
These notes are an extended version of a talk given by the author in the seminar "Theorie Spectrale et Geometrie" at the Institut Fourier in No- vember 2016. We present here some aspects of a work in collaboration with B. Collier and N. Tholozan (arXiv:1702.08799). We describe how Higgs bundle theory and pseudo-hyperbolic geometry interfere in the study of maximal representations into Hermitian Lie groups of rank 2.
Applying the techniques developed in [AGG], we construct new real hyperbolic manifolds whose underlying topology is that of a disc bundle over a closed orientable surface. By the Gromov-Lawson-Thurston conjecture [GLT], such bundles $M\to S$ should satisfy the inequality $|eM/χS|\leqslant1$, where $eM$ stands for the Euler number of the bundle and $χS$, for the Euler characteristic of the surface. In this paper, we construct new examples that provide a maximal value of $|eM/χS|=\frac35$ among all known examples. The former maximum, belonging to Feng Luo [Luo], was $|eM/χS|=\frac12$.
We study complex hyperbolic disc bundles over closed orientable surfaces that arise from discrete and faithful representations H_n->PU(2,1), where H_n is the fundamental group of the orbifold S^2(2,...,2) and thus contains a surface group as a subgroup of index 2 or 4. The results obtained provide the first complex hyperbolic disc bundles M->Σ that: admit both real and complex hyperbolic structures; satisfy the equality 2(χ+e)=3τ; satisfy the inequality χ/2<e; and induce discrete and faithful representations π_1Σ->PU(2,1) with fractional Toledo invariant; where χ is the Euler characteristic of…
We prove that the Teichmüller space $\mathcal{T}^{<0}(M)$ of negatively curved metrics on a hyperbolic manifold $M$ has nontrivial $i$-th rational homotopy groups for some $i> \dim M$. Moreover, some elements of infinite order in $π_i B\mbox{Diff}(M)$ can be represented by bundles over $S^i$ with fiberwise negatively curved metrics.
Our results complement D. Calegari's result that there are no hyperbolic once-punctured torus bundles over $S^1$ with trace field having real place. We exhibit several infinite families of pairs $(-χ, p)$ such that there exist hyperbolic surface bundles with over $S^1$ with fiber having $p$ punctures and Euler characteristic $χ$ with trace field of having a real place. This supports our conjecture that there exist such examples for each pair $(-χ, p)$ with finitely many known exceptions.
This paper is devoted to rigidity of smooth bundles which are equipped with fiberwise geometric or dynamical structure. We show that the fiberwise associated sphere bundle to a bundle whose leaves are equipped with (continuously varying) metrics of negative curvature is a topologically trivial bundle when either the base space is simply connected or, more generally, when the bundle is fiber homotopically trivial. We present two very different proofs of this result: a geometric proof and a dynamical proof. We also establish a number of rigidity results for bundles which are equipped with fiberw…
The branched virtual fibering theorem by Sakuma states that every closed orientable $3$-manifold with a Heegaard surface of genus $g$ has a branched double cover which is a genus $g$ surface bundle over the circle. It is proved by Brooks that such a surface bundle can be chosen to be hyperbolic. We prove that the minimal entropy over all hyperbolic, genus $g$ surface bundles as branched double covers of the $3$-sphere behaves like 1/$g$. We also give an alternative construction of surface bundles over the circle in Sakuma's theorem when closed $3$-manifolds are branched double covers of the $3…
We present a quantitative isolation property of the lifts of properly immersed geodesic planes in the frame bundle of a geometrically finite hyperbolic $3$-manifold. Our estimates are polynomials in the tight areas and Bowen-Margulis-Sullivan densities of geodesic planes, with degree given by the modified critical exponents.
A version of a conjecture of McMullen is as follows: Given a hyperbolizable 3-manifold M with incompressible boundary, there exists a uniform constant K such that if N is a hyperbolic 3-manifold homeomorphic to the interior of M, then the injectivity radius based at points in the convex core of N is bounded above by K. This conjecture suggests that convex cores are uniformly congested. We will give a proof in the case when M is an I-bundle over a closed surface, taking into account the possibility of cusps.
Let $F',F$ be any two closed orientable surfaces of genus $g'>g\ge 1$, and $f:F\to F$ be any pseudo-Anosov map. Then we can "extend" $f$ to be a pseudo-Anosov map $f':F'\to F'$ so that there is a fiber preserving degree one map $M(F',f')\to M(F,f)$ between the hyperbolic surface bundles. Moreover the extension $f'$ can be chosen so that the surface bundles $M(F',f')$ and $M(F,f)$ have the same first Betti numbers.
Culler and Shalen, and later Yoshida, give ways to construct incompressible surfaces in 3-manifolds from ideal points of the character and deformation varieties, respectively. We work in the case of hyperbolic punctured torus bundles, for which the incompressible surfaces were classified by Floyd and Hatcher. We convert non fiber incompressible surfaces from their form to the form output by Yoshida's construction, and run his construction backwards to give (for non semi-fibers, which we identify) the data needed to construct ideal points of the deformation variety corresponding to those surfac…
Gang, Kim and Yoon have recently proposed a conjecture on a vanishing identity of adjoint Reidemeister torsions of hyperbolic 3-manifolds with torus boundary, from the viewpoint of wrapped M5-branes. In this paper, we provide infinitely many new supporting examples to this conjecture. These examples come from hyperbolic once-punctured torus bundles. We show that the vanishing identity holds for all hyperbolic once-punctured torus bundles with tunnel number one. We also show the vanishing identity does not hold for any torus knot exteriors.
Unlike in hyperbolic geometry, the monodromy ideal triangulation of a hyperbolic once-punctured torus bundle $M_f$ has no natural geometric realisation in Cauchy-Riemann (CR) space. By introducing a new type of $3$--cell, we construct a different cell decomposition $\mathcal{D}_f$ of $M_f$ that is always realisable in CR space. As a consequence, we show that every hyperbolic once-punctured torus bundle admits a branched CR structure, whose branch locus is the set of edges of $\mathcal{D}_f$. Furthermore, we explicitly compute the ramification order around each component of the branch locus and…
We show a generic finiteness result for least area planes in 3-dimensional hyperbolic space. Moreover, we prove that the space of minimal immersions of disk into hyperbolic space is a submanifold of a product bundle over a space of immersions of circle into sphere at infinity. The bundle projection map when restricted to this submanifold is Fredholm of index zero. By using this result, we also show that the space of minimal planes with smooth boundary curve at infinity is a manifold.
Let $S$ be a closed, orientable surface of genus at least 2. The cotangent bundle of the "hyperbolic'' Teichmüller space of $S$ can be identified with the space $\CP$ of complex projective structures on $S$ through measured laminations, while the cotangent bundle of the "complex'' Teichmüller space can be identified with $\CP$ through the Schwarzian derivative. We prove that the resulting map between the two cotangent spaces, although not smooth, is symplectic. The proof uses a variant of the renormalized volume defined for hyperbolic ends.
To each once-punctured-torus bundle, $T_ϕ$, over the circle with pseudo-Anosov monodromy $ϕ$, there are associated two tessellations of the complex plane: one, $Δ(ϕ)$, is (the projection from $\infty$ of) the triangulation of a horosphere at $\infty$ induced by the canonical decomposition into ideal tetrahedra, and the other, $CW(ϕ)$, is a fractal tessellation given by the Cannon-Thurston map of the fiber group switching back and forth between gray and white each time it passes through $\infty$. In this paper, we study the relation between $Δ(ϕ)$ and $CW(ϕ)$.
Recent work of Chinburg, Reid, and Stover has shown that certain arithmetic and algebro-geometric properties of the character variety of a hyperbolic knot complement in the 3-sphere $M=S^3\setminus K$ yields topological and number theoretic information about Dehn fillings of M. Specifically, they show how the study of a certain extension problem for quaternion Azumaya algebras is related to topological invariants associated to these fillings. In this paper, we extend their work to the setting of hyperbolic once punctured torus bundles. Along the way, we exhibit new phenomenon in the relevant e…
The main theorem of this article provides sufficient conditions for a degree $d$ finite cover $M'$ of a hyperbolic 3-manifold $M$ to be a surface-bundle. Let $F$ be an embedded, closed and orientable surface of genus $g$, close to a minimal surface in the cover $M'$, splitting $M'$ into a disjoint union of $q$ handlebodies and compression bodies. We show that there exists a fiber in the complement of $F$ provided that $d$, $q$ and $g$ satisfy some inequality involving an explicit constant $k$ depending only on the volume and the injectivity radius of $M$. In particular, this theorem applies to…
We introduce para-complex and pseudo-Riemannian geometric methods for the study of representations of surface groups in $\mathrm{SL}(2m+1,\mathbb{R})$. For $m=1$ our techniques allow to recover several known results for Hitchin representations without any reference to convex projective geometry or hyperbolic affine spheres. In particular, we describe analytically the Guichard-Wienhard domain of discontinuity in the flag variety and the corresponding concave foliated flag structure of Nolte-Riestenberg. In higher rank, we obtain a one-to-one correspondence between stable cyclic $\mathrm{SL}(2m+…
In this paper, we determine the canonical polyhedral decomposition of every hyperbolic once-punctured torus bundle over the circle. In fact, we show that the only ideal polyhedral decomposition that is straight in the hyperbolic structure and that is invariant under a certain involution is the ideal triangulation defined by Floyd and Hatcher. Unlike previous work on this problem, the techniques we use are not geometric. Instead, they involve angled polyhedral decompositions, thin position and a version of almost normal surface theory.
This note describes sharp Milnor--Wood inequalities for the Euler number of flat oriented vector bundles over closed Riemannian manifolds locally isometric to products of hyperbolic planes. One consequence is that such manifolds do not admit an affine structure, confirming Chern--Sullivan's conjecture in this case. The manifolds under consideration are of particular interest, since in contrary to many other locally symmetric spaces they do admit flat vector bundle of the corresponding dimension. When the manifold is irreducible and of higher rank, it is shown that flat oriented vector bundles …
We define metric bundles/metric graph bundles which provide a purely topological/coarse-geometric generalization of the notion of trees of metric spaces a la Bestvina-Feighn in the special case that the inclusions of the edge spaces into the vertex spaces are uniform coarsely surjective quasi-isometries. We prove the existence of quasi-isometric sections in this generality. Then we prove a combination theorem for metric (graph) bundles (including exact sequences of groups) that establishes sufficient conditions, particularly flaring, under which the metric bundles are hyperbolic. We use this t…
We show that every plumbing of disc bundles over surfaces whose genera satisfy a simple inequality may be embedded as a convex submanifold in some closed hyperbolic four-manifold. In particular its interior has a geometrically finite hyperbolic structure that covers a closed hyperbolic four-manifold.
In this paper, we study strong symplectic fillability and Stein fillability of some tight contact structures on negative parabolic and negative hyperbolic torus bundles over the circle. For the universally tight contact structure with twisting $π$ in $S^1$-direction on a negative parabolic torus bundle, we completely determine its strong symplectic fillability and Stein fillability. For the universally tight contact structure with twisting $π$ in $S^1$-direction on a negative hyperbolic torus bundle, we give a necessary condition for it being strongly symplectically fillable. For the virtually…
We show the existence of tight contact structures on infinitely many hyperbolic three-manifolds obtained via Dehn surgeries along sections of hyperbolic surface bundles over circle.
A version of a conjecture of McMullen is as follows: Given a hyperbolizable 3-manifold M with incompressible boundary, there exists a uniform constant K such that if N is a hyperbolic 3-manifold homeomorphic to the interior of M, then the injectivity radius based at points in the convex core of N is bounded above by K. This conjecture suggests that convex cores are uniformly congested. In previous work, the author has proven the conjecture for $I$-bundles over a closed surface, taking into account the possibility of cusps. In this paper, we establish the conjecture in the case that M is a book…
We take a first step towards understanding the relationship between foliations and universally tight contact structures on hyperbolic 3-manifolds. If a surface bundle over a circle has pseudo-Anosov holonomy, we obtain a classification of "extremal" tight contact structures. Specifically, there is exactly one contact structure whose Euler class, when evaluated on the fiber, equals the Euler number of the fiber. This rigidity theorem is a consequence of properties of the action of pseudo-Anosov maps on the complex of curves of the fiber and a remarkable flexibility property of convex surfaces i…
We generalize the notion of tight geodesics in the curve complex to tight trees. We then use tight trees to construct model geometries for certain surface bundles over graphs. This extends some aspects of the combinatorial model for doubly degenerate hyperbolic 3-manifolds developed by Brock, Canary, and Minsky during the course of their proof of the Ending Lamination Theorem. Thus we obtain uniformly Gromov-hyperbolic geometric model spaces equipped with geometric $G-$actions, where $G$ admits an exact sequence of the form $$1 \to π_1(S) \to G \to Q \to 1.$$ Here $S$ is a closed surface of ge…
We show that for certain hyperbolic 3-manifolds, all boundary slopes are slopes of immersed incompressible surfaces, covered by incompressible embeddings in some finite cover. The manifolds include hyperbolic punctured torus bundles and hyperbolic two-bridge knots.
Let M be a hyperbolic manifold of finite volume which fibers over the circle with fiber a once punctured torus, and let S be an arbitrary incompressible surface in M. We determine the characteristic JSJ-subpair of M-S and show, in particular, that the guts of (M,S) is empty.
It is proved by Sakuma and Brooks that any closed orientable $3$-manifold with a Heegaard splitting of genus $g$ admits a $2$-fold branched cover that is a hyperbolic $3$-manifold and a genus $g$ surface bundle over the circle. This paper concerns entropy of pseudo-Anosov monodromies for hyperbolic fibered $3$-manifolds. We prove that there exist infinitely many closed orientable $3$-manifolds $M$ such that the minimal entropy over all hyperbolic, genus $g$ surface bundles over the circle as $2$-fold branched covers of the $3$-manifold $M$ is comparable to $1/g$.
We give a construction of hyperbolic 3-manifolds with rank two fundamental groups and report an experimental search to find such manifolds. Our manifolds are all surface bundles over the circle with genus two surface fiber. For the manifolds so obtained, we then examine whether they are of Heegaard genus two or not. As a byproduct, we give an infinite family of fibered knots of genus two in the 3-sphere whose knot groups are of rank two.
