For each Montesinos knot $K$, we propose an efficient method to explicitly determine the irreducible ${\rm SL}(2,\mathbb{C})$-character variety, and show that it can be decomposed as $\mathcal{X}_0(K)\sqcup\mathcal{X}_1(K)\sqcup\mathcal{X}_2(K)\sqcup\mathcal{X}'(K)$, where $\mathcal{X}_0(K)$ consists of trace-free characters, $\mathcal{X}_1(K)$ consists of characters of "unions" of representations of rational knots (or rational link, which appears at most once), $\mathcal{X}_2(K)$ is an algebraic curve, and $\mathcal{X}'(K)$ consists of finitely many points when $K$ satisfies a generic condition.
Exceptional Dehn surgeries have been classified for 2-bridge knots and Montesinos knots of length at least 4. In this paper we classify all toroidal Dehn surgeries on Montesinos knots of length 3.
We show that if a Montesinos knot admits a Dehn surgery yielding a toroidal Seifert fibered 3-manifold, then the knot is the trefoil knot and the surgery slope is 0.
Using Hirasawa-Murasugi's classification of fibered Montesinos knots we classify the L-space Montesinos knots, providing further evidence towards a conjecture of Lidman-Moore that L-space knots have no essential Conway spheres. In the process, we classify the fibered Montesinos knots whose open books support the tight contact structure on $S^3$. We also construct L-space knots with arbitrarily large tunnel number and discuss the question of whether L-space knots admit essential tangle decompositions in the context of satellite operations and tunnel number.
We establish the slice-ribbon conjecture for a large family of Montesinos' knots by means of Donaldson's theorem on the intersection forms of definite 4-manifolds.
It is shown that there exist alternating non-Montesinos knots whose essential spanning surfaces with maximal and minimal boundary slopes are not realised by the checkerboard surfaces coming from a reduced alternating planar diagram.
We will use immersed surfaces to study Seifert fibered surgery on Montesinos knots, and show that if $\frac 1{q_1-1} + \frac 1{q_2-1} + \frac 1{q_3-1} \leq 1$ then a Montesinos knot $K(\frac{p_1}{q_1}, \frac{p_2}{q_2}, \frac{p_3}{q_3})$ admits no atoroidal Seifert fibered surgery.
The (Strong) Slope Conjecture relates the degree of the colored Jones polynomial of a knot to certain essential surfaces in the knot complement. We verify the Slope Conjecture and the Strong Slope Conjecture for 3-string Montesinos knots satisfying certain conditions.
We show that a finite numerical boundary slope of an essential surface in the exterior of a Montesinos knot is bounded above and below in terms of the numbers of positive/negative crossings of a specific minimal diagram of the knot.
Conjecture $\mathbb{Z}$ is a knot theoretical equivalent form of the Kervaire Conjecture. We say that a knot have property $\mathbb{Z}$ if it satisfies Conjecture $\mathbb{Z}$ for that specific knot. In this work, we show that alternating Montesinos knots with three tangles have property $\mathbb{Z}$. We also show that all the pretzel knots of the form $P(p,q,r)$ (not necessarily alternating) have property $\mathbb{Z}$.
We calculate the twisted Alexander polynomials of all tunnel number one Montesinos knots associated to their $SL_2(\mathbb{C})$-representations and obtain their leading coefficients and degrees. As a corollary, we get some interesting examples, that is, nonfibered knots with monic Alexander polynomials which have non-monic twisted Alexander polynomials.
In this paper, two lower bounds on the diameters of the boundary slope sets are given for Montesinos knots. One is described in terms of the minimal crossing numbers of the knots, and the other is related to the Euler characteristics of essential surfaces with the maximal/minimal boundary slopes.
For the alternating knots or links, mutations do not change the arc index. In the case of nonalternating knots, some semi-alternating knots or links have this property. We mainly focus on the problem of mutation invariance of the arc index for nonalternating knots which are not semi-alternating. In this paper, we found families of infinitely many mutant pairs/triples of Montesinos knots with the same arc index.
The Slope Conjecture relates the degree of the colored Jones polynomial to the boundary slopes of a knot. We verify the Slope Conjecture and the Strong Slope Conjecture for Montesinos knots $M(\frac{1}{r},\frac{1}{s-\frac{1}{u}},\frac{1}{t} )$ with $r,u,t$ odd, $s$ even and $u\leq-1$, $r<-1<1<s,t$.
We give (1) an upper bound on the denominators of numerical boundary slopes and (2) an upper bound on the differences between two numerical boundary slopes, for Montesinos knot exteriors.
The Slope Conjecture relates the degree of the colored Jones polynomial of a knot to boundary slopes of incompressible surfaces. Our aim is to prove the Slope Conjecture for Montesinos knots, and to match parameters of a state-formula for the colored Jones polynomial of such knots with the parameters that describe their corresponding incompressible surfaces via the Hatcher-Oertel algorithm.
We show that there are Montesinos knots with $n+1\geq 4$ tangles whose character varieties contain arbitrarily many irreducible components of dimension $d$ for any $1\le d\le n-2$. Moreover, these irreducible components can be chosen so that the trace of the meridian is non-constant.
Exceptional Dehn surgeries on arborescent knots have been classified except for Seifert fibered surgeries on Montesinos knots of length 3. There are infinitely many of them as it is known that 4n+6 and 4n+7 surgeries on a (-2, 3, 2n+1) pretzel knot are Seifert fibered. It will be shown that there are only finitely many others. A list of 20 surgeries will be given and proved to be Seifert fibered. We conjecture that this is a complete list.
Using Gauge theoretical techniques employed by Lisca for 2-bridge knots and by Greene-Jabuka for 3-stranded pretzel knots, we show that no member of the family of Montesinos knots M(0;[m_1+1,n_1+2],[m_2+1,n_2+2],q), with certain restrictions on m_i, n_i, and q, can be (smoothly) slice. Our techniques use Donaldson's diagonalization theorem and the fact that the 2-fold covers of Montisinos knots bound plumbing 4-manifolds, many of which are negative definite. Some of our examples include knots with signature 0 and square determinant.
In the complement of a hyperbolic Montesinos knot with 4 rational tangles, we investigate the number of closed, connected, essential, orientable surfaces of a fixed genus $g$, up to isotopy. We show that there are exactly 12 genus 2 surfaces and $8ϕ(g - 1)$ surfaces of genus greater than 2, where $ϕ(g - 1)$ is the Euler totient function of $g - 1$. Observe that this count is independent of the number of crossings of the knot. Moreover, this class of knots form an infinite class of hyperbolic 3-manifolds and the result applies to all such knot complements.
Recently Iltgen, Lewark and Marino introduced the concept of a proper rational tangle replacement and the corresponding notion of the proper rational unknotting number. In this note we derive a version of the Montesinos trick for proper rational tangle replacement and use it to study knots with proper rational unknotting number one. We prove that knots with proper rational unknotting number one are prime and classify the alternating knots with proper rational unknotting number one. We also study Montesinos knots with proper rational unknotting number one.
The aim of this article is to detect new classes of quasi-alternating links. Quasi-alternating links are a natural generalization of alternating links. Their knot Floer and Khovanov homology are particularly easy to compute. Since knot Floer homology detects the genus of a knot as well as whether a knot is fibered, as provided bounds on unknotting number and slice genus, characterization of quasi-alternating links becomes an interesting open problem. We show that there exist classes of non-alternating Montesinos links, which are quasi-alternating.
The Kauffman-Harary conjecture states that for any reduced alternating diagram K of a knot with a prime determinant p, every non-trivial Fox p-coloring of K assigns different colors to its arcs. We generalize the conjecture by stating it in terms of homology of the double cover of S^3 branched along a link. In this way we extend the scope of the conjecture to all prime alternating links of arbitrary determinants. We first prove the Kauffman-Harary conjecture for pretzel knots and then we generalize our argument to show the generalized Kauffman-Harary conjecture for all Montesinos links. Finall…
Tomova, along with results of Bachman and Schleimer, showed that any high distance knot has a stair-step bridge spectrum. In this paper, we compute the bridge spectra and distance of generalized Montesinos knots. In particular, we produce the first example of a class of knots which attain the stair-step bridge spectra but are not high distance, by computing the bridge spectra of certain pretzel knots and Montesinos knots.
C. Giller proposed an invariant of ribbon 2-knots in S^4 based on a type of skein relation for a projection to R^3. In certain cases, this invariant is equal to the Alexander polynomial for the 2-knot. Giller's invariant is, however, a symmetric polynomial -- which the Alexander polynomial of a 2-knot need not be. After modifying a 2-knot into a Montesinos twin in a natural way, we show that Giller's invariant is related to the Seiberg-Witten invariant of the exterior of the twin, glued to the complement of a fiber in E(2).
Quasi-alternating links are a generalization of alternating links. They are homologically thin for both Khovanov homology and knot Floer homology. Recent work of Greene and joint work of the first author with Kofman resulted in the classification of quasi-alternating pretzel links in terms of their integer tassel parameters. Replacing tassels by rational tangles generalizes pretzel links to Montesinos links. In this paper we establish conditions on the rational parameters of a Montesinos link to be quasi-alternating. Using recent results on left-orderable groups and Heegaard Floer L-spaces, we…
We give a new criterion for a given knot to be a Montesinos knot by using the Rasmussen invariant and the signature. We apply the criterion to study Seifert fibered surgery on a strongly invertible knot, and show that a $(p,q,q)$-pretzel knot with integers $p,q \ge 2$ admits no Seifert fibered surgery.
We study character varieties of symmetric knots and their reductions mod p. We observe that the varieties present a different behaviour according to whether the knots admit a free or periodic symmetry.
For a fibered knot in the 3-sphere the twisted Alexander polynomial associated to an SL(2,C)-character is known to be monic. It is conjectured that for a nonfibered knot there is a curve component of the SL(2,C)-character variety containing only finitely many characters whose twisted Alexander polynomials are monic, i.e. finiteness of such characters detects fiberedness of knots. In this paper we discuss the existence of a certain curve component which relates to the conjecture when knots have nonmonic Alexander polynomials. We also discuss the similar problem of detecting the knot genus.
We study the twisted Alexander polynomial from the viewpoint of the SL(2,C)-character variety of nonabelian representations of a knot group. It is known that if a knot is fibered, then the twisted Alexander polynomials associated with nonabelian SL(2,C)-representations are all monic. In this paper, we show that the converse holds for 2-bridge knots. Furthermore we show that for a 2-bridge knot there exists a curve component in the SL(2,C)-character variety such that if the knot is not fibered then there are only finitely many characters in the component for which the associated twisted Alexand…
Let K be a knot in an integral homology 3-sphere and let B denote the 2-fold branched cover of the integral homology sphere branched along K. We construct a map from the slice of characters with trace free along meridians in the SL(2, C)-character variety of the knot exterior to the SL(2, C)-character variety of 2-fold branched cover B. When this map is surjective, it describes the slice as the 2-fold branched cover over the SL(2, C)-character variety of B with branched locus given by the abelian characters, whose preimage is precisely the set of metabelian characters. We show that each of met…
We show that all twist knots, certain double twist knots and some other 2-bridge knots are minimal elements for the partial ordering on the set of prime knots. The key to these results are presentations of their character varieties using Chebyshev polynomials and a criterion for irreducibility of a polynomial of two variables. These give us an elementary method to discuss the number of irreducible components of the character varieties, which concludes the result essentially.
We show that every $\mathbb{Z}$-torsion free knot module is realized by a ribbon 2-knot with group of geometric dimension at most 2, and give some partial results on the characterization of the knot modules of fibred ribbon 2-knots.
We consider the Reidemeister torsion associated with SL(2, C)-representations of a knot group. A bifurcation point in the SL(2, C)-character variety of a knot group is a character which is given by both an abelian SL(2, C)-representation and a non-abelian one. We show that there exist limits of the non-acyclic Reidemeister torsion at bifurcation points and the limits are expressed by using the derivation of the Alexander polynomial of the knot in this paper.
We study the relationship between Ng's abelian cord ring and SL(2,C) characters of the two-fold branched cover $Σ(K)$. Augmentations, and their corresponding rank, play a central role in the relationship. Our study also leads to a correspondence between trace-free SL(2,C) characters of a knot complement and augmentations. Whether the trace-free character is metabelian or not is determined by the rank of the corresponding augmentation. Necessary and sufficient conditions are given on the augmentation for it to correspond to an SU(2) character. This provides an effective tool for finding represe…
We classify Dehn surgeries on (p,q,r) pretzel knots that result in a manifold of finite fundamental group. The only hyperbolic pretzel knots that admit non-trivial finite surgeries are (-2,3,7) and (-2,3,9). Agol and Lackenby's 6-theorem reduces the argument to knots with small indices p,q,r. We treat these using the Culler-Shalen norm of the SL(2,C)-character variety. In particular, we introduce new techniques for demonstrating that boundary slopes are detected by the character variety.
Weights of essential surfaces in 2-bridge knot complements
University of Wisconsin, Madison（威斯康星大学麦迪逊分校）；Department of Mathematics and Statistics, The College of New Jersey（新泽西学院数学与统计系）；Ignite Fueling Innovation, Inc（Ignite燃料创新公司）
We show that for any knot there exist only finitely many irreducible metabelian characters in the $SL(2,\mathbb{C})$-character variety of the knot group, and the number is given explicitly by using the determinant of the knot. Then it turns out that for any 2-bridge knot a section of the $SL(2,\mathbb{C})$-character variety consists entirely of all the metabelian characters, i.e., the irreducible metabelian characters and the single reducible (abelian) character. Moreover we find that the number of irreducible metabelian characters gives an upper bound of the maximal degree of the A-polynomial…
We calculate the universal character ring of a class of two-generator, one-relator groups. As an application we give a less technical proof of a result in [LT] on the universal character ring of the (-2,3,2n+1)-pretzel knot. We also give an elementary proof of a result in [Ma] on the character variety of the (-2,3,2n+1)-pretzel knot.
We find explicit models for the PSL(2,C)- and SL(2,C)-character varieties of the fundamental groups of complements in S^3 of an infinite family of two-bridge knots that contains the twist knots. We compute the genus of the components of these character varieties, and deduce upper bounds on the degree of the associated trace fields. We also show that these knot complements are fibered if and only if they are commensurable to a fibered knot complement in a Z/2Z-homology sphere, resolving a conjecture of Hoste and Shanahan.
