Deforming foliations in branched covers and the L-space conjecture
We discuss joint work with Ying Hu concerning the left-orderability of the fundamental groups of cyclic branched covers of links which admit co-oriented taut foliations. In particular, we do this for cyclic branched covers of fibered knots in integer homology 3-spheres and cyclic branched covers of closed braids in the 3-sphere. The latter allows us to complete the proof of the L-space conjecture for closed, connected, orientable, irreducible 3-manifolds containing a genus 1 fibered knot. We also prove that the universal abelian cover of a manifold obtained by generic Dehn surgery on a hyperbolic fibered knot in an integer homology 3-sphere admits a co-oriented taut foliation and has left-orderable fundamental group, even if the surgered manifold does not.