On hyperbolic surface bundles over the circle as branched double covers of the $3$-sphere

Abstract

The branched virtual fibering theorem by Sakuma states that every closed orientable $3$-manifold with a Heegaard surface of genus $g$ has a branched double cover which is a genus $g$ surface bundle over the circle. It is proved by Brooks that such a surface bundle can be chosen to be hyperbolic. We prove that the minimal entropy over all hyperbolic, genus $g$ surface bundles as branched double covers of the $3$-sphere behaves like 1/$g$. We also give an alternative construction of surface bundles over the circle in Sakuma's theorem when closed $3$-manifolds are branched double covers of the $3$-sphere branched over links. A feature of surface bundles coming from our construction is that the monodromies can be read off the braids obtained from the links as the branched set.