Universal circles for quasigeodesic flows

Danny Calegari

Published 2004-06-02, updated 2009-04-22Version 4

We show that if M is a hyperbolic 3-manifold which admits a quasigeodesic flow, then pi_1(M) acts faithfully on a universal circle by homeomorphisms, and preserves a pair of invariant laminations of this circle. As a corollary, we show that the Thurston norm can be characterized by quasigeodesic flows, thereby generalizing a theorem of Mosher, and we give the first example of a closed hyperbolic 3-manifold without a quasigeodesic flow, answering a long-standing question of Thurston.