This paper investigates certain foliations of three-manifolds that are hybrids of fibrations over the circle with foliated circle bundles over surfaces: a 3-manifold slithers around the circle when its universal cover fibers over the circle so that deck transformations are bundle automorphisms. Examples include hyperbolic 3-manifolds of every possible homological type. We show that all such foliations admit transverse pseudo-Anosov flows, and that in the universal cover of the hyperbolic cases, the leaves limit to sphere-filling Peano curves. The skew R-covered Anosov foliations of Sergio Fenley are examples. We hope later to use this structure for geometrization of slithered 3-manifolds.
Given a uniform foliation by Gromov hyperbolic leaves on a $3$-manifold, we show that the action of the fundamental group on the universal circle is minimal and transitive on pairs of different points. We also prove two other results: we prove that general uniform Reebless foliations are $\mathbb{R}$-covered and we give a new description of the universal circle of $\mathbb{R}$-covered foliations with Gromov hyperbolic leaves in terms of the JSJ decomposition of $M$.
Let (M, F) be a compact codimension-one foliated manifold whose leaves are equipped with Riemannian metrics, and consider continuous functions on M that are harmonic along the leaves of F . If every such function is constant on leaves we say that (M, F) has the Liouville property. Our main result is that codimension-one foliated bundles over compact negatively curved manifolds satisfy the Liouville property. Related results for R-covered foliations, as well as for discrete group actions and discrete harmonic functions, are also established.
Let $F$ be a leafwise hyperbolic taut foliation of a closed 3-manifold $M$ and let $L$ be the leaf space of the pullback of $F$ to the universal cover of $M$. We show that if $F$ has branching, then the natural action of $π_1(M)$ on $L$ is faithful. We also show that if $F$ has a finite branch locus $B$ whose stabilizer acts on $B$ nontrivially, then the stabilizer is an infinite cyclic group generated by an indivisible element of $π_1(M)$.
A foliation is R-covered if the leaf space in the universal cover is homeomorphic to the real numbers. We show that, up to topological conjugacy, there are at most two pseudo-Anosov flows transverse to such a foliation. If there are two, then the foliation is weakly conjugate to the the stable foliation of an R-covered Anosov flow. The proof uses the universal circle to R-covered foliations.
This paper is devoted to discussing affine Hirsch foliations on $3$-manifolds. First, we prove that up to isotopic leaf-conjugacy, every closed orientable $3$-manifold $M$ admits $0$, $1$ or $2$ affine Hirsch foliations. Furthermore, every case is possible. Then, we analyze the $3$-manifolds admitting two affine Hirsch foliations (abbreviated as Hirsch manifolds). On the one hand, we construct Hirsch manifolds by using exchangeable braided links (abbreviated as DEBL Hirsch manifolds); on the other hand, we show that every Hirsch manifold virtually is a DEBL Hirsch manifold. Finally, we show th…
If M is an atoroidal 3-manifold with a taut foliation, Thurston showed that pi_1(M) acts on a circle. Here, we show that some other classes of essential laminations also give rise to actions on circles. In particular, we show this for tight essential laminations with solid torus guts. We also show that pseudo-Anosov flows induce actions on circles. In all cases, these actions can be made into faithful ones, so pi_1(M) is isomorphic to a subgroup of Homeo(S^1). In addition, we show that the fundamental group of the Weeks manifold has no faithful action on S^1. As a corollary, the Weeks manifold…
A foliation of a manifold M is called R-covered if its lift to the universal cover of M has space of leaves R. We show that there are many graph manifolds which admit taut foliations, but which do not admit any R-covered foliations. On the other hand, we show that these manifolds all have finite covers admitting R-covered foliations.
We investigate contrasting behaviours emerging when studying foliations on non-metrisable manifolds. It is shown that Kneser's pathology of a manifold foliated by a single leaf cannot occur with foliations of dimension-one. On the other hand, there are open surfaces admitting no foliations. This is derived from a qualitative study of foliations defined on the long tube $\mathbb S^1\times {\mathbb L}_+$ (product of the circle with the long ray), which is reminiscent of a `black hole', in as much as the leaves of such a foliation are strongly inclined to fall into the hole in a purely vertical w…
This paper explores the conjecture that the following are equivalent for rational homology 3-spheres: having left-orderable fundamental group, having non-minimal Heegaard Floer homology, and admitting a co-orientable taut foliation. In particular, it adds further evidence in favor of this conjecture by studying these three properties for more than 300,000 hyperbolic rational homology 3-spheres. New or much improved methods for studying each of these properties form the bulk of the paper, including a new combinatorial criterion, called a foliar orientation, for showing that a 3-manifold has a t…
We show that for a taut foliation F with one-sided branching of an atoroidal 3-manifold M, one can construct a pair of genuine laminations with solid torus complementary regions which bind every leaf of F in a geodesic lamination. These laminations come from a universal circle, a refinement of the universal circles proposed by Thurston, which maps monotonely and group-equivariantly to each of the circles at infinity of the leaves of the universal cover of F, and is minimal with respect to this property. This circle is intimately bound up with the extrinsic geometry of the leaves of F. In parti…
We consider hyperbolic and partially hyperbolic diffeomorphisms on compact manifolds. Associated with invariant foliation of these systems, we define some topological invariants and show certain relationships between these topological invariants and the geometric and Lyapunov growths of these foliations. As an application, we show examples of systems with persistent non- absolute continuous center and weak unstable foliations. This generalizes the remarkable results of Shub and Wilkinson to cases where the center manifolds are not compact.
We study the topology of the space of smooth codimension one foliations on a closed 3-manifold. We regard this space as the space of integrable plane fields included in the space of all smooth plane fields. It has been known since the late 60's that every plane field can be deformed continuously to an integrable one, so the above inclusion induces a surjective map between connected components. We prove that this map is actually a bijection.
This is a problem list in the theory of foliations and laminations of 3-manifolds. The focus is on the relationship of foliations and laminations with other aspects of 3-manifold topology, especially with the Thurston theory of geometric structures. This problem list is not meant to be comprehensive; rather it focusses on research areas that currently seem (to the author) particularly promising.
We show that a graph manifold which is a Z-homology 3-sphere not homeomorphic to either the 3-sphere or the Poincaré homology 3-sphere admits a horizontal foliation. This combines with known results to show that the conditions of not being an L-space, of having a left-orderable fundamental group, and of admitting a co-oriented taut foliation, are equivalent for graph manifold Z-homology 3-spheres.
A graph manifold rational homology $3$-sphere $W$ with a left-orderable fundamental group admits a co-oriented taut foliation, though it is unknown whether it admits a smooth co-oriented taut foliation. In this paper we extend the gluing theorem of arXiv:1401.7726 to graph manifold rational homology solid tori and use this to show that there are smooth foliations on the pieces of $W$ which come close to matching up on its JSJ tori. This is applied to prove that a graph manifold with left-orderable fundamental group is not an L-space.
We produce examples of taut foliations of hyperbolic 3-manifolds which are R-covered but not uniform --- ie the leaf space of the universal cover is R, but pairs of leaves are not contained in bounded neighborhoods of each other. This answers in the negative a conjecture of Thurston `Three-manifolds, foliations and circles I' (math.GT/9712268). We further show that these foliations can be chosen to be C^0 close to foliations by closed surfaces. Our construction underscores the importance of the existence of transverse regulating vector fields and cone fields for R-covered foliations. Finally, …
We consider the existence of symplectic and conformal symplectic codimension-one foliations on closed manifolds of dimension at least 5. Our main theorem, based on a recent result by Bertelson-Meigniez, states that in dimension at least 7 any almost contact structure is homotopic to a conformal symplectic foliation. In dimension 5 we construct explicit conformal symplectic foliations on every closed, simply-connected, almost contact manifold, as well as honest symplectic foliations on a large subset of them. Lastly, via round-connected sums, we obtain, on closed manifolds, examples of conforma…
In this note we observe, answering a question of Eliashberg and Thurston, that all contact structures on a closed oriented 3-manifold are $C^\infty$-deformations of foliations.
On every compact and orientable three-manifold, we construct total foliations (three codimension 1 foliations that are transverse at every point). This construction can be performed on any homotopy class of plane fields with vanishing Euler class. As a corollary we obtain similar results on bi-contact structures.
We describe several methods to construct minimal foliations by hyperbolic surfaces on closed 3-manifolds, and discuss the properties of the examples thus obtained.
We present a few general results on foliations of 4-manifolds by surfaces: existence, tautness, relations to minimal genus of embedded surfaces; as well as some open problems. We hope to stimulate interest in this area.
Piecewise Euclidean structures (identified solid Euclidean polyhedra) on topological 3-dimensional manifolds and pseudo-manifolds are constructed so that they admit pseudo-foliations, a generalized type of foliation. The construction of non-manifold point neighborhoods is done to preserve as much of the geometric, and vector space, structure of Euclidean space as possible. This enables structures, such as foliations and calibrations, to generalize over to pseudo-manifolds. The main result is that the cone of any compact topological surfaces can be given a piecewise flat metric structure that a…
We define Seiberg-Witten equations on closed manifolds endowed with a Riemannian foliation of codimension 4. When the foliation is taut, we show compactness of the moduli space under some hypothesis satisfied for instance by closed K-contact manifolds. Furthermore, we prove some vanishing and non-vanishing results and we highlight that the invariants may be used to distinguish different foliations on diffeomorphic manifolds.
We prove the following theorem for Holomorphic Foliations in compact complex kaehler manifolds: if there is a compact leaf with finite holonomy, then every leaf is compact with finite holonomy. As corollary we reobtain stability theorems for compact foliations in Kaehler manifolds of Edwards-Millett-Sullivan and Hollman.
In this paper we show that every three-dimensional closed hyperbolic manifold admits no locally geometric $1$-parameter family of closed minimal surfaces.
Let $g_t$ be a smooth 1-parameter family of negatively curved metrics on a closed hyperbolic 3-manifold $M$ starting at the hyperbolic metric. We construct foliations of the Grassmann bundle $Gr_2(M)$ of tangent 2-planes whose leaves are (lifts of) minimal surfaces in $(M,g_t)$. These foliations are deformations of the foliation of $Gr_2(M)$ by (lifts of) totally geodesic planes projected down from the universal cover $\mathbb{H}^3$. Our construction continues to work as long as the sum of the squares of the principal curvatures of the (projections to $M$) of the leaves remains pointwise small…
In this paper, we prove that if a quasi-Fuchsian 3-manifold contains a minimal surface whose principle curvature is less than 1, then it admits a foliation such that each leaf is a surface of constant mean curvature. The key method that we use here is volume preserving mean curvature flow.
We investigate the combinatorial analogues, in the context of normal surfaces, of taut and transversely measured (codimension 1) foliations of 3-manifolds. We establish that the existence of certain combinatorial structures, a priori weaker than the existence of the corresponding foliation, is sufficient to guarantee that the manifold in question satisfies certain properties, e.g. irreducibility. The finiteness of our combinatorial structures allows us to make our results quantitative in nature and has (coarse) geometrical consequences for the manifold. Furthermore, our techniques give a strai…
We present new open manifolds that are not homeomorphic to leaves of any C^0 codimension one foliation of a compact manifold. Among them are simply connected manifolds of dimension 5 or greater that are non-periodic in homotopy or homology, namely in their 2-dimensional homotopy or homology groups.
Let $N$ be a compact manifold with a foliation $\mathscr{F}_N$ whose leaves are compact strictly convex projective manifolds. Let $M$ be a compact manifold with a foliation $\mathscr{F}_M$ whose leaves are compact hyperbolic manifolds of dimension bigger than or equal to $3$. Suppose to have a foliation-preserving homeomorphism $f:(N,\mathscr{F}_N) \rightarrow (M,\mathscr{F}_M)$ which is $C^1$-regular when restricted to leaves. In the previous situation there exists a well-defined notion of foliated volume entropies $h(N,\mathscr{F}_N)$ and $h(M,\mathscr{F}_M)$ and it holds $h(M,\mathscr{F}_M)…
Motivated by the moduli theory of taut contact circles on spherical 3-manifolds, we relate taut contact circles to transversely holomorphic flows. We give an elementary survey of such 1-dimensional foliations from a topological viewpoint. We describe a complex analogue of the classical Godbillon-Vey invariant, the so-called Bott invariant, and a logarithmic monodromy of closed leaves. The Bott invariant allows us to formulate a generalised Gauß-Bonnet theorem. We compute these invariants for the Poincaré foliations on the 3-sphere and derive rigidity statements, including a uniformisation theo…
If $Y$ is a closed orientable graph manifold, we show that $Y$ admits a coorientable taut foliation if and only if $Y$ is not an L-space. Combined with previous work of Boyer and Clay, this implies that $Y$ is an L-space if and only if $π_1(Y)$ is not left-orderable.
Measured foliations at infinity of quasi-Fuchsian manifolds are a natural analog at infinity to the measured bending laminations on the boundary of its convex core. We show that given a pair of arational measured foliations $(\mathsf{F}_{+},\mathsf{F}_{-})$ which fill a closed hyperbolic surface $S$, for $t>0$ sufficiently small, $t\mathsf{F}_{+}$ and $t\mathsf{F}_{-}$ can be uniquely realised as the measured foliations at infinity of a quasi-Fuchsian manifold homeomorphic to $S\times \mathbb{R}$, which is sufficiently close to the Fuchsian locus. Here arationality means that the corresponding…
We present existence results for certain singular 2-dimensional foliations on 4-manifolds. The singularities can be chosen to be simple, e.g. the same as those that appear in Lefschetz pencils. There seems to be a wealth of such creatures on most 4-manifolds. In certain cases, one can prescribe surfaces to be transverse or be leaves of these foliations. The purpose of this paper is to offer objects, hoping for a future theory to be developed on them. For example, foliations that are taut might offer genus bounds for embedded surfaces (Kronheimer's conjecture).
A transversely holomorphic foliation on a compact complex manifold, exhibits a compact stable leaf if and only if the set of compact leaves is not a zero measure subset of the manifold.
Let $X$ be an $(n+1)$-dimensional manifold, $Δ$ be a one-dimensional foliation on $X$, and $p: X \to X / Δ$ be a quotient map. We will say that a leaf $ω$ of $Δ$ is special whenever the space of leaves $X / Δ$ is not Hausdorff at $ω$. We present necessary and sufficient conditions for the map $p: X \to X / Δ$ to be a locally trivial fibration under assumptions that all leaves of $Δ$ are non-compact and the family of all special leaves of $Δ$ is locally finite.
Every open manifold L of dimension greater than one has complete Riemannian metrics g with bounded geometry such that (L,g) is not quasi-isometric to a leaf of a codimension one foliation of a closed manifold. Hence no conditions on the local geometry of (L,g) suffice to make it quasi-isometric to a leaf of such a foliation. We introduce the `bounded homology property', a semi-local property of (L,g) that is necessary for it to be a leaf in a compact manifold in codimension one, up to quasi-isometry. An essential step involves a partial generalization of the Novikov closed leaf theorem to high…
For a compact complex manifold, we introduce holomorphic foliations associated with certain abelian subgroups of the automorphism group. Such foliations are generalizations of holomorphic principal torus bundles. If there exists a transverse Kähler structure on such a foliation, then we obtain a nice differential graded algebra which is quasi-isomorphic to the de Rham complex and a nice differential bigraded algebra which is quasi-isomorphic to the Dolbeault complex like the formality of compact Kähler manifolds. Moreover, under certain additional condition, we can develop Morgan's theory of m…
This article describes the following results which relate to each other; i) convergence of high dimensional contact structure to codimension one foliation with Reeb component, ii) relation between Nil-type and Sol-type contact submanifolds of S^5, iii) definition of convex Thurston-Bennequin inequality, and iv) generalization of Lutz twist via convex hypersurface theory. The other article concerning non-convex hypersurfaces is included as an appendix.
We study Lie foliations on compact manifolds, in case the Lie group is compact. Our main results improve Tischler classical result on the existence of fibration and, as an application, we study the case the manifold has an amenable fundamental group.
We describe a construction which takes as an input a left order of the fundamental group of a manifold, and outputs a (singular) foliation of this manifold which is analogous to a taut foliation. We investigate this construction in detail in dimension $2$, and exhibit connections to various problems in dimension $3$.
We study codimension one smooth foliations with Morse type singularities on closed ma-nifolds. We obtain a description of the manifold in case the number of centers in greater then the number of saddles. This result relies on and extends previous results of Reeb (for foliations having only centers) and Ells-Kuiper (for manifolds admitting Morse functions with three singularities).
We define a norm on the homology of a foliated manifold, which refines and majorizes the usual Gromov norm on homology. This norm depends in an upper semi-continuous way on the underlying foliation, in the geometric topology, and can therefore be used to study the question of which foliations arise as geometric limits of isotopy classes of other foliations. We show that this norm is non-trivial -- i.e. it distinguishes certain taut foliations of a given hyperbolic 3-manifold. In fact, modulo some standard conjectures, this norm should precisely detect amongst taut foliations of closed atoroida…
We show that the properties of admitting a co-oriented taut foliation and having a left-orderable fundamental group are equivalent for rational homology $3$-sphere graph manifolds and relate them to the property of not being a Heegaard-Floer L-space. This is accomplished in several steps. First we show how to detect families of slopes on the boundary of a Seifert fibred manifold in four different fashions - using representations, using left-orders, using foliations, and using Heegaard-Floer homology. Then we show that each method of detection determines the same family of detected slopes. Next…
The original article titled "Variétés (non séparées) à une dimension et structures feuilletées du plan" was published in 1957 in French in L'Enseignement Mathématique. It establishes a beautiful connection between foliations of the plane and non-Hausdorff $1$-dimensional manifolds arising naturally as leaf spaces of the foliations. Since its appearance, this theory has paved the way for several results concerning dynamical systems and foliations of the plane and $2$-manifolds. Haefliger and Reeb's article inspires many results in the theory of foliation of $3$-manifolds as well: we refer the i…
A K(pi,1)-foliation is one for which the universal covers of all leaves are contractible (thus all leaves are K(pi,1)'s for some pi). In the first part of the paper we show that the tangential Lusternik--Schnirelmann category cat F of a K(pi,1)-foliation F on a manifold M is bounded from below by t-codim F for any t with H_t(M;A) nonzero for some coefficient group A. Since for any C^2-foliation F one has cat F <= dim F by our Theorem 5.2 of [Topology 42 (2003) 603-627], this implies that cat F = dim F for K(pi,1)-foliations of class C^2 on closed manifolds. For K(pi,1)-foliations on open manif…
We show that if $N$, an open connected $n$-manifold with finitely generated fundamental group, is $C^{2}$ foliated by closed planes, then $π_{1}(N)$ is a free group. This implies that if $π_{1}(N)$ has an Abelian subgroup of rank greater than one, then $\mathcal{F}$ has at least a non closed leaf. Next, we show that if $N$ is three dimensional with fundamental group abelian of rank greater than one, then $N$ is homeomorphic to $\mathbb{T}^2\times \mathbb{R}.$ Furthermore, in this case we give a complete description of the foliation.
We survey the interactions between foliations and contact structures in dimension three, with an emphasis on sutured manifolds and invariants of sutured contact manifolds. This paper contains two original results: the fact that a closed orientable irreducible 3-manifold M with nonzero second homol-ogy carries a hypertight contact structure and the fact that an orientable, taut, balanced sutured 3-manifold is not a product if and only if it carries a contact structure with nontrivial cylindrical contact homology. The proof of the second statement uses the Handel-Miller theory of end-periodic di…
