Universal circles for quasigeodesic flows

These revised lecture notes are an expository account of part of the proof of Thurston's Ending Lamination Conjecture for Kleinian surface groups, which states that such groups are uniquely determined by invariants that describe the asymptotic structure of the ends of their quotient manifolds.

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 wi...

The main result is that if an Anosov flow in a closed hyperbolic three manifold is not R-covered, then the flow is a quasigeodesic flow. We also prove that if a hyperbolic three manifold supports an Anosov flow, then up to a double cover it supports a quasigeodesic flow. We prove the continuous extension property for the stable and unstable foliations of any Anosov flow in a closed hyperbolic three manifold, and the existence of group invariant Peano curves associated with an...

Geometrization theorem, fibered case: Every three-manifold that fibers over the circle admits a geometric decomposition. Double limit theorem: for any sequence of quasi-Fuchsian groups whose controlling pair of conformal structures tends toward a pair of projectively measured laminations that bind the surface, there is a convergent subsequence. This preprint also analyzes the quasi-isometric geometry of quasi-Fuchsian 3-manifolds. This eprint is based on a 1986 preprint, whic...

We define a new geometric flow, which we shall call the $K$-flow, on 3-dimensional Riemannian manifolds; and study the behavior of Thurston's model geometries under this flow both analytically and numerically. As an example, we show that an initially arbitrarily deformed homogeneous 3-sphere flows into a round 3-sphere and shrinks to a point in the unnormalized flow; or stays as a round 3-sphere in the volume normalized flow. The $K$-flow equation arises as the gradient flow ...

We prove that for any orientable connected surface of finite type which is not a a sphere with at most four punctures or a torus with at most two punctures, any homeomorphism of the space of geodesic laminations of this surface, equipped with the Thurston topology, is induced by a homeomorphism of the surface.

Given a taut depth-one foliation $\mathcal{F}$ in a closed atoroidal 3-manifold $M$ transverse to a pseudo-Anosov flow $\phi$ without perfect fits, we show that the universal circle coming from leftmost sections $\mathfrak{S}_\mathrm{left}$ associated to $\mathcal{F}$, constructed by Thurston and Calegari-Dunfield, is isomorphic to the ideal boundary of the flow space associated to $\phi$ with natural structure maps. As a corollary, we use a theorem of Barthelm\'e-Frankel-Man...

We use our new type of bounded locally homeomorphic quasiregular mappings in the unit 3-ball to address long standing problems for such mappings. The construction of such mappings comes from our construction of non-trivial compact 4-dimensional cobordisms $M$ with symmetric boundary components and whose interiors have complete 4-dimensional real hyperbolic structures. Such bounded locally homeomorphic quasiregular mappings are defined in the unit 3-ball $B^3\subset \mathbb{R}...

We give a more geometric approach to an algorithm for deciding whether two hyperbolic 3-manifolds are homeomorphic. We also give a more algebraic approach to the homeomorphism problem for geometric, but non-hyperbolic, 3-manifolds.

In this paper, we construct a geometrical compactification of the geodesic flow of non-compact complete hyperbolic surfaces $\Sigma$ without cusps having finitely generated fundamental group. We study the dynamical properties of the compactified flow, for which we show the existence of attractive circles at infinity. The geometric structure of ${\mathrm{T}}^1\Sigma$ for which this compactification is realized is the pair of one-dimensional distributions tangent to the stable ...