Virtually Fibered Conjecture (Paperback)

High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! In the mathematical subfield of 3-manifolds, the virtually fibered conjecture, formulated by American mathematician William Thurston, states that every closed, irreducible, atoroidal 3-manifold with infinite fundamental group has a finite cover which is a surface bundle over the circle. A 3-manifold which has such a finite cover is said to virtually fiber. If M is a Seifert fiber space, then M virtually fibers if and only if the rational Euler number of the Seifert fibration or the (orbifold) Euler characteristic of the base space is zero. The hypotheses of the conjecture are satisfied by hyperbolic 3-manifolds. In fact, assuming the geometrization conjecture, the only case needed to be proven for the virtually fibered conjecture is that of hyperbolic 3-manifolds.