NYJM Logo

New York Journal of Mathematics
Volume 32 (2026), 1064-1088

  

Jonathan Johnson and Henry Segerman

Non-standard bi-orders on punctured torus bundles

view    print


Published: June 21, 2026.
Keywords: bi-orderability, hyperbolic, fiber bundles, orderable groups.
Subject [2020]: 06F15, 20F60, 57K32, 57R22, 57M05.

Abstract
Results of Perron and Rolfsen imply that untwisted hyperbolic once-punctured torus bundles over the circle have bi-orderable fundamental groups. They do this by showing that the action of the monodromy preserves a "standard" bi-ordering formed using the lower central series of the free group. Here we investigate other bi-orderings that punctured torus bundle groups can have. We show that for every such bi-ordering, the largest and second largest proper convex subgroups match the corresponding convex subgroups for a standard bi-ordering. Moreover, if there exists a third largest convex subgroup, it must also match the third largest convex subgroup for a standard bi-ordering. However, we also show that these groups admit non-standard bi-orderings.

Acknowledgements

The authors thank Danny Calegari and Neil Hoffman for helpful conversations. The authors were supported in part by National Science Foundation grants DMS-2213213 and DMS-2203993 respectively.


Author information

Jonathan Johnson
Department of Mathematics and Statistics
Sam Houston State University
Lee Drain Building, Room 420, 1900 Avenue I
Huntsville, Texas 77340, USA

jcj055@shsu.edu

Henry Segerman
Department of Mathematics
Oklahoma State University
401 Mathematical Sciences
Stillwater, OK 74078, USA

henry.segerman@okstate.edu