The space of (contact) Anosov flows on 3-manifolds

Abstract

The first half of this paper is concerned with the topology of the space $\AAA(M)$ of (not necessarily contact) Anosov vector fields on the unit tangent bundle $M$ of closed oriented hyperbolic surfaces $\Sigma$. We show that there are countably infinite connected components of $\AAA(M)$, each of which is not simply connected. In the second part, we study contact Anosov flows. We show in particular that the time changes of contact Anosov flows form a $C^1$-open subset of the space of the Anosov flows which leave a particular $C^\infty$ volume form invariant, if the ambiant manifold is a rational homology sphere.