Graph manifolds, left-orderability and amalgamation

Abstract

We show that every irreducible toroidal integer homology sphere graph manifold has a left-orderable fundamental group. This is established by way of a specialization of a result due to Bludov and Glass [Proc. Lond. Math. Soc. 99 (2009) 585–608] for the amalgamated products that arise, and in this setting work of Boyer, Rolfsen and Wiest [Ann. Inst. Fourier (Grenoble) 55 (2005) 243–288] may be applied. Our result then depends on known relations between the topology of Seifert fibred spaces and the orderability of their fundamental groups.