Saturday, May 25 2019, 3pm Boyd Room 328 Title: Taut Foliations, Positive 3-Braids, and the L-Space Conjecture Abstract: The L-Space Conjecture is taking the low-dimensional topology community by storm. It aims to relate seemingly distinct Floer homological, algebraic, and geometric properties of a closed 3-manifold Y. In particular, it predicts a 3-manifold Y isn’t ”simple” from the perspective of Heegaard-Floer homology if and only if Y admits a taut foliation. The reverse implication was proved by Ozsvath and Szabo. In this talk, we’ll present a new theorem supporting the forward implication. Namely, we’ll build taut foliations for manifolds obtained by surgery on positive 3-braid closures. Our theorem provides the first construction of taut foliations for every non-L-space obtained by surgery along an infinite family of hyperbolic L-space knots. As an example, we’ll construct taut foliations in every non-L-space obtained by surgery along the P(-2,3,7) pretzel knot.
