On fibered commensurability

Abstract

This paper initiates a systematic study of the relation of commensurability of surface automorphisms, or equivalently, fibered commensurability of 3-manifolds fibering over the circle. We show that every hyperbolic fibered commensurability class contains a unique minimal element, whereas the class of Seifert manifolds fibering over the circle consists of a single commensurability class with infinitely many minimal elements. The situation for non-geometric manifolds is more complicated, and we illustrate a range of phenomena that can occur in this context.