Title: Free Seifert fibered pieces of pseudo-Anosov flows

Sergio Fenley, Florida State University and Princeton Univ. Tuesday, Feb. 14, 3:30-4:30pm, Hill 005.

Abstract: We prove a structure theorem for pseudo-Anosov flows restricted to Seifert fibered pieces of three manifolds. The piece is called periodic if there is a Seifert fibration so that a regular fiber is freely homotopic, up to powers, to a closed orbit of the flow. A non periodic Seifert fibered piece is called free. In this talk we consider free Seifert pieces. We show that, in a carefully defined neighborhood of the free piece, the pseudo-Anosov flow is orbitally equivalent to a hyperbolic blow up of a geodesic flow piece. A geodesic flow piece is a finite cover of the geodesic flow on a compact hyperbolic surface, usually with boundary. We introduce almost k-convergence groups, and an associated convergence theorem. We also introduce an alternative model for the geodesic flow of a hyperbolic surface that is suitable to prove these results, and we define what is a hyperbolic blow up. This is joint work with Thierry Barbot.