Universal circles for quasigeodesic flows

If M is a hyperbolic 3-manifold with a quasigeodesic flow then we show that \pi_1(M) acts in a natural way on a closed disc by homeomorphisms. Consequently, such a flow either has a closed orbit or the action on the boundary circle is M\"obius-like but not conjugate into PSL(2, R). We conjecture that the latter possibility cannot occur.

Given a closed hyperbolic 3-manifold M with a quasigeodesic flow we construct a \pi_1-equivariant sphere-filling curve in the boundary of hyperbolic space. Specifically, we show that any complete transversal P to the lifted flow on H^3 has a natural compactification as a closed disc that inherits a \pi_1 action. The embedding of P in H^3 extends continuously to the compactification and the restriction to the boundary is a surjective \pi_1-equivariant map from S^1 to S^2_\inft...

Any closed, oriented, hyperbolic three-manifold with nontrivial second homology has many quasigeodesic flows, where quasigeodesic means that flow lines are uniformly efficient in measuring distance in relative homotopy classes. The flows are pseudo-Anosov flows which are almost transverse to finite depth foliations in the manifold. The main tool is the use of a sutured manifold hierarchy which has good geometric properties.

Thurston showed that the fundamental group of a close atoroidal 3-manifold admitting a co-oriented taut foliation acts faithfully on the circle by orientation-preserving homeomorphisms. This action on the circle is called a universal circle action due to its rich information. In this article, we first review Thurston's theory of universal circles and follow-up work of other authors. We note that the universal circle action of a 3-manifold group always admits an invariant lami...

In this article we obtain a simple topological and dynamical systems condition which is necessary and sufficient for an arbitrary pseudo-Anosov flow in a closed, hyperbolic three manifold to be quasigeodesic. Quasigeodesic means that orbits are efficient in measuring length up to a bounded multiplicative distortion when lifted to the universal cover. We prove that such flows are quasigeodesic if and only if there is an upper bound, depending only on the flow, to the number of...

Let phi be a pseudo-Anosov flow on a closed oriented atoroidal 3-manifold M. We show that if F is any taut foliation almost transverse to phi, then the action of pi_1(M) on the boundary of the flow space, together with a natural collection of explicitly described monotone maps, defines a universal circle for F in the sense of Thurston and Calegari-Dunfield.

Quasigeodesic behavior of flow lines is a very useful property in the study of Anosov flows. Not every Anosov flow in dimension three is quasigeodesic. In fact up to orbit equivalence, the only previously known examples of quasigeodesic Anosov flows were suspension flows. In this article, we prove that a new class of examples are quasigeodesic. These are the first examples of quasigeodesic Anosov flows on three manifolds that are neither Seifert, nor solvable, nor hyperbolic....

If $M$ is a hyperbolic 3-manifold fibering over the circle, the fundamental group of $M$ acts faithfully by homeomorphisms on a circle (the circle at infinity of the universal cover of the fiber), preserving a pair of invariant (stable and unstable) laminations. Many different kinds of dynamical structures (e.g. taut foliations, quasigeodesic or pseudo-Anosov flows) are known to give rise to universal circles -- a circle with a faithful $\pi_1(M)$ action preserving a pair of ...

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...

This paper determines which orientable hyperbolic 3-manifolds contain simple closed geodesics. The Fuchsian group corresponding to the thrice-punctured sphere generates the only example of a complete non-elementary orientable hyperbolic 3-manifold that does not contain a simple closed geodesic. We do not assume that the manifold is geometrically finite or that it has finitely generated fundamental group.