We initiate the study of circular-orderability of 3-manifold groups, motivated by the L-space conjecture. We show that a compact, connected, ℙ2-irreducible 3-manifold has a circularly orderable fundamental group if and only if there exists a finite cyclic cover with left-orderable fundamental group, which naturally leads to a “circular-orderability version” of the L-space conjecture. We also show that the fundamental groups of almost all graph manifolds are circularly orderable, and contrast the behaviour of circular-orderability and left-orderability with respect to the operations of Dehn surgery and taking cyclic branched covers.
Ba, Idrissa  1 ; Clay, Adam  1
@article{10_2140_agt_2025_25_791,
author = {Ba, Idrissa and Clay, Adam},
title = {Circular-orderability of 3-manifold groups},
journal = {Algebraic and Geometric Topology},
pages = {791--825},
year = {2025},
volume = {25},
number = {2},
doi = {10.2140/agt.2025.25.791},
url = {http://geodesic.mathdoc.fr/articles/10.2140/agt.2025.25.791/}
}
TY - JOUR AU - Ba, Idrissa AU - Clay, Adam TI - Circular-orderability of 3-manifold groups JO - Algebraic and Geometric Topology PY - 2025 SP - 791 EP - 825 VL - 25 IS - 2 UR - http://geodesic.mathdoc.fr/articles/10.2140/agt.2025.25.791/ DO - 10.2140/agt.2025.25.791 ID - 10_2140_agt_2025_25_791 ER -
Ba, Idrissa; Clay, Adam. Circular-orderability of 3-manifold groups. Algebraic and Geometric Topology, Tome 25 (2025) no. 2, pp. 791-825. doi: 10.2140/agt.2025.25.791
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