Taut foliations, transverse flows, and Floer homology

The L-space conjecture makes a prediction about which rational homology spheres can admit a taut foliation. But where could the predicted taut foliations "come from"? Must they be compatible with “natural” geometric structures on the 3-manifold? In this talk, I'll discuss forthcoming work with John Baldwin and Matt Hedden, where we address a type of geography problem for taut foliations. In particular, we show that when K is a fibered strongly quasipositive knot, large surgeries along K can never admit a taut foliation which is ‘’compatible’’ with the natural flow on the Dehn surgered manifold. I'll explain why this is surprising, and if time permits, sketch the proof. No background will be assumed — all are welcome!

Please report video problems to itsupport@slmath.org.

See more of our Streaming videos on our main VMath Videos page.