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Is it true that the mapping torus of a solvmanifold is always a solvmanifold?

Some relevant facts, many from Flat 3 manifolds and mapping tori of flat surfaces :

  • Every mapping torus of a compact nilmanifold is a (compact) solvmanifold see Torus bundles and compact solvmanifolds

  • The 1d solvmanifolds are $ S^1, \mathbb{R} $. The mapping tori of $ S^1 $ are $ T^2,K^2 $ and the mapping tori of $ \mathbb{R} $ are $ \mathbb{R} \times S^1, M $ where $ M $ is the Mobius strip. These mapping tori are all solvmanifolds.

  • The 2d solvmanifolds are $ \mathbb{R}^2, T^2,K^2,\mathbb{R} \times S^1, M $.

  • The mapping tori of $ T^2 $ are given here Bianchi classification of solvable Lie groups and cocompact subgroups or here https://mathoverflow.net/questions/414531/3-dimensional-solvmanifolds-and-thurston-geometries/416509#416509 in particular they are given by the trace of the mapping class and whether it is diagonalizable. Also they are all solvmanifolds since $ T^2 $ is a compact nilmanifold.

  • The mapping tori of $ \mathbb{R}^2 $ are $ \mathbb{R}^2 \times S^1, \mathbb{R} \times M $. They are both solvmanifolds.

  • The mapping tori of the cylinder $ S^1 \times M , \mathbb{R} \times T^2, \mathbb{R} \times K^2 , X $. The first three are solvmanifolds, unsure about the $ X $.

  • The mapping tori of the Mobius strip $ M $ are $ S^1 \times M, Y $. The first is a solvmanifold, unsure about $ Y $.

  • The four mapping tori of $ K^2 $ are given here Mapping Torus of Klein bottle they are exactly the four flat compact nonorientable 3 manifolds. The trivial product $ S^1 \times K^2 $ is a solvmanifold. Unsure about the other three

Ian Gershon Teixeira
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1 Answers1

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This will be Q&A style because I figured out a counterexample while writing the question.

Every mapping torus of the Klein bottle admits a flat metric. So if every mapping torus of a solvmanifold were a solvmanifold then every mapping torus of the Klein bottle would be a flat solvmanifold. However that is not true. In the examples section of

https://www.jstor.org/stable/1997859?seq=1

all three dimensional flat solvmanifolds are listed. There are only seven. Five are the flat mapping tori (from the five finite order mapping classes) of $ T^2 $ and the two others are two of the mapping tori of the Klein bottle. Thus exactly two of the nontrivial mapping tori of the Klein bottle fail to be solvmanifolds

Ian Gershon Teixeira
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