English

Universal circles for Anosov foliations

Geometric Topology 2025-12-12 v1

Abstract

Thurston introduced the notion of a universal circle associated to a taut foliation of a 33-manifold as a way of organizing the ideal circle boundaries of its leaves into a single circle action. Calegari--Dunfield proved that every taut foliation of an atoroidal 33-manifold MM has a universal circle, but the uniqueness (or lack-thereof) of this structure remains rather mysterious. In this paper, we consider the foliations associated to an Anosov flow φ\varphi on MM, showing that several constructions of a universal circle in the literature are typically distinct. Moreover, the underlying action of the Calegari--Dunfield leftmost universal circle is generally not even conjugate to the universal circle arising from the boundary of the flow space of φ\varphi. Our primary tool is a way to use the flow space of φ\varphi to parameterize the circle bundle at infinity of φ\varphi's invariant foliations.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2512.10107,
  title  = {Universal circles for Anosov foliations},
  author = {Ellis Buckminster and Samuel J. Taylor},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2512.10107},
  year   = {2025}
}
R2 v1 2026-07-01T08:19:38.198Z