Symplectic , subgroup separability, and vanishing Thurston norm

Let be a closed, oriented -manifold. A folklore conjecture states that admits a symplectic structure if and only if admits a fibration over the circle. We will prove this conjecture in the case when is irreducible and its fundamental group satisfies appropriate subgroup separability conditions. This statement includes -manifolds with vanishing Thurston norm, graph manifolds and -manifolds with surface subgroup separability (a condition satisfied conjecturally by all hyperbolic -manifolds). Our result covers, in particular, the case of 0-framed surgeries along knots of genus one. The statement follows from the proof that twisted Alexander polynomials decide fiberability for all the -manifolds listed above. As a corollary, it follows that twisted Alexander polynomials decide if a knot of genus one is fibered.