Affine laminations and their stretch factors (Q1392492)

An affine lamination \(L\) on a manifold \(M\) is a lamination in \(M\) whose lift to the universal cover \(\widetilde M\) of \(M\) is a measured lamination such that each deck transformation multiplies the measure by a factor. The stretch factor of an affine lamination generalizes the notion of a stretch factor of a pseudo-Anosov map. There is a method to analyse the set of affine laminations, and their stretch factors, carried by a branched submanifold \(B\) embedded in \(M\). The final part of the paper describes some examples of affine essential 2-dimensional laminations of 3-manifolds.