Transverse surfaces and pseudo-Anosov flows

Abstract Let 𝜑 be a transitive pseudo-Anosov flow on an oriented, compact 3-manifold 𝑀, possibly with toral boundary. We characterize the surfaces in 𝑀 that are (almost) transverse to 𝜑. When 𝜑 has no perfect fits (e.g. 𝜑 is the suspension flow of a pseudo-Anosov homeomorphism), we prove that any Thurston norm-minimizing surface 𝑆 that pairs nonnegatively with the closed orbits of 𝜑 is almost transverse to 𝜑, up to isotopy. This answers a question of Cooper–Long–Reid. Our main tool is a correspondence between surfaces that are almost transverse to 𝜑 and those that are relatively carried by any associated veering triangulation. The correspondence also allows us to investigate the uniqueness of almost transverse position, to extend Mosher’s Transverse Surface Theorem to the case with boundary, and more generally to characterize when relative homology classes represent Birkhoff surfaces.