The Borel complexity of the space of left‐orderings, low‐dimensional topology, and dynamics

Abstract We develop new tools to analyze the complexity of the conjugacy equivalence relation , whenever is a left‐orderable group. Our methods are used to demonstrate nonsmoothness of for certain groups of dynamical origin, such as certain amalgams constructed from Thompson's group . We also initiate a systematic analysis of , where is a 3‐manifold. We prove that if is not prime, then is a universal countable Borel equivalence relation, and show that in certain cases the complexity of is bounded below by the complexity of the conjugacy equivalence relation arising from the fundamental group of each of the JSJ pieces of . We also prove that if is the complement of a nontrivial knot in then is not smooth, and show how determining smoothness of for all knot manifolds is related to the L‐space conjecture.