A closed transversal is a closed curve everywhere transverse to the leaves of a foliation. A single such curve meeting every leaf proves that the foliation is a taut foliation.
Choose a fiber monodromy representative fixing the boundary of the fiber Seifert surface pointwise. The boundary of each fiber is the Seifert longitude, precisely the slope used by zero Dehn filling. Attach the filling solid torus as , matching with the boundary of the fiber at . The fibers cap off to closed topological surfaces of the same genus ; extend the fiber monodromy across the disk by the identity. Thus
This is a foliation by fibers of a bundle over , and every leaf is compact with genus .
Choose a point in the interior of the capping disk, which fixes. Its suspension is an embedded closed curve in the mapping torus. It is transverse to the foliation and meets every fiber once. Hence every leaf meets a closed transversal to a foliation, which is the defining criterion for a taut foliation. Therefore the fiber foliation is taut.
Taut foliation 2026-10-05
A codimension-one foliation of a closed three-manifold is taut if every leaf meets a closed transverse curve. In particular, the fibers of a bundle over form a taut foliation.