Flows and Thurston’s norm: Beyond fibered faces
Introductory Workshop: Topological and Geometric Structures in Low Dimensions & Geometry and Dynamics for Discrete Subgroups of Higher Rank Lie Groups January 26, 2026 - January 30, 2026
Location: SLMath: Eisenbud Auditorium, Online/Virtual
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No Primary AMS MSC
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It is tempting to look for a unified flow-theoretic framework for the Thurston norm that generalizes the fibered picture from Talk 1. I will discuss some fundamental results of Mosher in this direction, as well as his Norm and Flow Finiteness Conjecture, which asserts that the Thurston norm of an oriented irreducible atoroidal 3-manifold can be computed by finitely many pseudo-Anosov flows. To attack this conjecture, one needs a way of building pseudo-Anosov flows, which will lead us to the famous Gabai-Mosher construction of pseudo-Anosov flows from sutured manifold hierarchies. I will present a few examples of this, and mention some more recent developments if time allows.