Operations on open book foliations

Abstract

We study $b$–arc foliation changes and exchange moves of open book foliations which generalize the corresponding operations in braid foliation theory. We also define a bypass move as an analogue of Honda’s bypass attachment operation.

As applications, we study how open book foliations change under a stabilization of the open book. We also generalize Birman–Menasco’s split/composite braid theorem: we show that closed braid representatives of a split (resp. composite) link in a certain open book can be converted to a split (resp. composite) closed braid by applying exchange moves finitely many times.