New methods for computing a variety of gauge theoretic invariants for homology 3-spheres are developed. These invariants include the Chern-Simons invariants, the spectral flow of the odd signature operator, and the rho invariants of irreducible SU(2) representations. These quantities are calculated for flat SU(2) connections on homology 3-spheres obtained by 1/k Dehn surgery on (2,q) torus knots. The methods are then applied to compute the SU(3) gauge theoretic Casson invariant (introduced in [H U Boden and C M Herald, The SU(3) Casson invariant for integral homology 3--spheres, J. Diff. Geom. 50 (1998) 147-206]) for Dehn surgeries on (2,q) torus knots for q=3,5,7 and 9.
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.
It is conjectured that a hyperbolic knot admits at most three Dehn surgeries which yield closed three manifolds containing incompressible tori. We show that there exist infinitely many hyperbolic knots which attain the conjectural maximum number. Interestingly, those surgeries correspond to consecutive integers.
We will classify all exceptional Dehn surgeries on 2-bridge knots according to whether they produce reducible, toroidal, or small Seifert fibered manifolds.
We study Dehn surgeries on null-homotopic knots that yield fibred $3$--manifolds when an additional (but natural) homological restriction is imposed. The major tool used is Gabai's theory of sutured manifold decomposition. Such surgeries are negative examples to a question of Michel Boileau. Another result we will prove is about surgeries which reduce the Thurston norm of a fibred manifold.
We determine the Dehn surgeries on 2-bridge links, which yield reducible 3-manifolds. Further, we show the conditions that we obtain a torus or cable knot from one component of a 2-bridge link by a surgery on another component.
Given a knot K in the three-sphere, we address the question: which Dehn surgeries on K bound negative-definite four-manifolds? We show that the answer depends on a number m(K), which is a smooth concordance invariant. We study the properties of this invariant, and compute it for torus knots.
We prove two conjectures of C. Gordon. We show that the maximal number of exceptional Dehn surgeries on a 1-cusped hyperbolic 3-manifold is 10, and that the maximal intersection number between exceptional slopes is 8. The proof uses a combination of new geometric techniques and a rigorous computer-assisted calculation.
By using grid homology theory, we give an explicit algorithm for computing Ozsváth-Stipsicz-Szabó's $Υ$-invariant and the $d$-invariant of Dehn surgeries along knots in $S^3$. As its application, we compute the two invariants for all prime knots with up to 11 crossings.
A knot in the 3-sphere is called an L--space knot if it admits a nontrivial Dehn surgery yielding an L--space. Like torus knots and Berge knots, many L--space knots admit also a Seifert fibered surgery. We give a concrete example of a hyperbolic, L-space knot which has no exceptional surgeries, in particular, no Seifert fibered surgeries.
Hyperbolic Dehn surgery and the bending procedure provide two ways which can be used to describe hyperbolic deformations of a complete hyperbolic structure on a 3-manifold. Moreover, one can obtain examples of non-Haken manifolds without the use of Thurston's Uniformization Theorem. We review these gluing techniques and present a logical continuity between these ideas and gluing methods for Higgs bundles. We demonstrate how one can construct certain model objects in representation varieties $\text{Hom} \left( π_{1} \left( Σ\right), G \right) $ for a topological surface $Σ$ and a semisimple Lie…
We construct a 1-parameter family of $\mathrm{SL}_2(\mathbf{R})$ representations of the pretzel knot $P(-2,3,7)$. As a consequence, we conclude that Dehn surgeries on this knot are left-orderable for all rational surgery slopes less than 6. Furthermore, we discuss a family of knots and exhibit similar orderability results for a few other examples.
We show that if a surgery on a knot in a product sutured manifold yields the same product sutured manifold, then this knot is a 0-- or 1--crossing knot. The proof uses techniques from sutured manifold theory.
We show some computations on representations of the fundamental group in SL(2;C) and Reidemeister torsion for a homology 3-sphere obtained by Dehn surgery along the figure-eight knot. This is the second version. We recorrected several errors in the first version.
We use an algorithm by Ozsvath and Szabo to find closed formulae for the ranks of the hat version of the Heegaard Floer homology groups for non-zero Dehn surgeries on knots in the 3-sphere. As applications we provide new bounds on the number of distinct ranks of the Heegaard Floer groups a Dehn surgery can have. These in turn give a new lower bound on the rational Dehn surgery genus of a rational homology 3-sphere. We also provide novel obstructions for a knot to be a potential counterexample to the Cabling Conjecture.
We establish an upper bound $ω(p/q)$ on the complexity of manifolds obtained by $p/q$-surgeries on the figure eight knot. It turns out that if $ω(p/q)\leqslant 12$, the bound is sharp.
We consider the question of which Dehn surgeries along a given knot bound rational homology balls. We use Ozsváth and Szabó's correction terms in Heegaard Floer homology to obtain general constraints on the surgery coefficients. We then turn our attention to the case of integral surgeries, with particular emphasis on positive torus knots. Finally, combining these results with a lattice-theoretic obstruction based on Donaldon's theorem, we classify which integral surgeries along torus knots of the form $T_{kq\pm 1,q}$ bound rational homology balls.
We apply a spherical CR Dehn surgery theorem in order to obtain infinitely many Dehn surgeries of the Whitehead link complement that carry spherical CR structures. We consider as starting point the spherical CR uniformization of the Whitehead link complement constructed by Parker and Will, using a Ford domain in the complex hyperbolic plane $\mathbb{H}^2_{\mathbb{C}}$. We deform the Ford domain of Parker and Will in $\mathbb{H}^2_{\mathbb{C}}$ in a one parameter family. On the one side, we obtain infinitely many spherical CR uniformizations on a particular Dehn surgery on one of the cusps of t…
We show that the resulting manifold by $r$-surgery on a large class of two-bridge knots has left-orderable fundamental group if the slope $r$ satisfies certain conditions. This result gives a supporting evidence to a conjecture of Boyer, Gordon and Watson that relates $L$-spaces and the left-orderability of their fundamental groups.
We show that on a hyperbolic knot $K$ in $S^3$, the distance between any two finite surgery slopes is at most two and consequently there are at most three nontrivial finite surgeries. Moreover in case that $K$ admits three nontrivial finite surgeries, $K$ must be the pretzel knot $P(-2,3,7)$. In case that $K$ admits two noncyclic finite surgeries or two finite surgeries at distance two, the two surgery slopes must be one of ten or seventeen specific pairs respectively. For $D$-type finite surgeries, we improve a finiteness theorem due to Doig by giving an explicit bound on the possible resulti…
Let $K$ be a hyperbolic knot in the 3-sphere. If $r$-surgery on $K$ yields a lens space, then we show that the order of the fundamental group of the lens space is at most $12g-7$, where $g$ is the genus of $K$. If we specialize to genus one case, it will be proved that no lens space can be obtained from genus one, hyperbolic knots by Dehn surgery. Therefore, together with known facts, we have that a genus one knot $K$ admits Dehn surgery yielding a lens space if and only if $K$ is the trefoil.
I calculate optimistically asymptotic behaviors of the WRT SU(2) invariants for the three-manifolds obtained from the figure-eight knot by p-surgeries with p=0,1,2,...,10, from which one can extract volumes and the Chern-Simons invariants of these closed manifolds. I conjecture that this also holds for general closed three-manifolds.
We summarize and expand known connections between the study of Dehn surgery on links and the study of trisections of closed, smooth 4-manifolds. In addition, we describe how the potential counterexamples to the Generalized Property R Conjecture given by Gompf, Scharlemann, and Thompson yield genus four trisections of the standard four-sphere that are unlikely to be standard. Finally, we give an analog of the Casson- Gordon Rectangle Condition for trisections that can be used to obstruct reducibility of a given trisection.
We show that the resulting manifold by $r$-surgery on the hyperbolic twist knot $K_m, \, m \ge 2$, has left-orderable fundamental group if the slope $r$ satisfies the condition $r \in (-4,2m)$ if $m$ is even, and $r \in [0,4] \cup (\frac{4m}ω+4, 2m+4)$ if $m$ is odd, where $ω>1$ is the unique real solution of the equation $x e^{x}=4m$.
We provide a new obstruction for a rational homology 3-sphere to arise by Dehn surgery on a given knot in the 3-sphere. The obstruction takes the form of an inequality involving the genus of the knot, the surgery coefficient, and a count of L-structures on the 3-manifold, that is spin-c structures with the simplest possible associated Heegaard Floer group. Applications include an obstruction for two framed knots to yield the same 3-manifold, an obstruction that is particularly effective when working with families of framed knots. We introduce the rational and integral Dehn surgery genera for a…
Suppose $α$ and $R$ are disjoint simple closed curves in the boundary of a genus two handlebody $H$ such that $H[R]$ embeds in $S^3$ as the exterior of a hyperbolic knot $k$(thus, $k$ is a tunnel-number-one knot), and $α$ is Seifert in $H$(i.e., a 2-handle addition $H[α]$ is a Seifert-fibered space) and not the meridian of $H[R]$. Then for a slope $γ$ of $k$ represented by $α$, $γ$-Dehn surgery $k(γ)$ is a Seifert-fibered space. Such a construction of Seifert-fibered Dehn surgeries generalizes that of Seifert-fibered Dehn surgeries arising from primtive/Seifert positions of a knot, which was i…
Two Dehn surgeries on a knot are called {\it purely cosmetic}, if they yield manifolds that are homeomorphic as oriented manifolds. Suppose there exist purely cosmetic surgeries on a knot in $S^3$, we show that the two surgery slopes must be the opposite of each other. One ingredient of our proof is a Dehn surgery formula for correction terms in Heegaard Floer homology.
We investigate the behavior of the SL(2,C) Casson invariant for 3-manifolds obtained by Dehn surgery along two-bridge knots. Using the results of Hatcher and Thurston, and also results of Ohtsuki, we outline how to compute the Culler--Shalen seminorms, and we illustrate this approach by providing explicit computations for double twist knots. We then apply the surgery formula of Curtis to deduce the SL(2,C) Casson invariant for the 3-manifolds obtained by p/q-Dehn surgery on such knots. These results are applied to prove nontriviality of the SL(2,C) Casson invariant for nearly all 3-manifolds o…
Let $M$ be a $\mathbb{Q}$-homology solid torus. In this paper, we give a cohomological criterion for the existence of an interval of left-orderable Dehn surgeries on $M$. We apply this criterion to prove that the two-bridge knot that corresponds to the continued fraction $[1,1,2,2,2j]$ for $j\geq 1$ admits an interval of left-orderable Dehn surgeries. This family of two-bridge knots gives some positive evidence for a question of Xinghua Gao.
Two Dehn surgeries on a knot are called purely cosmetic if their surgered manifolds are homeomorphic as oriented manifolds. Gordon conjectured that non-trivial knots in $S^3$ do not admit purely cosmetic surgeries. In this article, we confirm this conjecture for cable knots.
For a hyperbolic knot in the 3-sphere, the distance between toroidal surgeries is at most 5, except the figure eight knot. In this paper, we determine all hyperbolic knots that admit two toroidal surgeries with distance 5.
The purpose of this paper is to classify Anosov flows on the 3-manifolds obtained by Dehn surgeries on the figure-eight knot. This set of 3-manifolds is denoted by M(r) (r is a ratioanl number), which contains the first class of hyperbolic 3-manifolds admitting Anosov flows in history, discovered by Goodman. Combining with the classification of Anosov flows on the sol-manifold M(0) due to Plante, we have: 1. if r is an integer, up to topological equivalence, M(r) exactly carries a unique Anosov flow, which is constructed by Goodman by doing a Dehn-Fried-Goodman surgery on a suspension Anosov f…
We give examples of knots in a genus 2 handlebody which have nontrivial Dehn surgeries yielding handlebodies and show that these knots are not 1--bridge.
Two Dehn surgeries on a knot are called purely cosmetic if their surgered manifolds are homeomorphic as oriented manifolds. Gordon conjectured that non-trivial knots in $S^3$ do not admit purely cosmetic surgeries. In this article, we confirm this conjecture for connected sums of knots by analysing the JSJ-structures.
A pair of surgeries on a knot is chirally cosmetic if they result in homeomorphic manifolds with opposite orientations. Using recent methods of Ichihara, Ito, and Saito, we show that, except for the (2,5) and (2,7)-torus knots, the genus 2 and 3 alternating odd pretzel knots do not admit any chirally cosmetic surgeries. Further, we show that for a fixed genus, at most finitely many alternating odd pretzel knots admit chirally cosmetic surgeries.
We show that all pretzel knots satisfy the (purely) cosmetic surgery conjecture, i.e. Dehn surgeries with different slopes along a pretzel knot provide different oriented three-manifolds.
In this note, we prove that a nontrivial Kinoshita-Terasaka or Conway knot does not admit chirally cosmetic surgeries, by calculating the finite type invariant of order 3.
How do Seifert surgeries on hyperbolic knots arise from those on torus knots? We approach this question from a networking viewpoint. The Seifert Surgery Network is a 1-dimensional complex whose vertices correspond to Seifert surgeries; two vertices are connected by an edge if one Seifert surgery is obtained from the other by a single twist along a trivial knot called a seiferter or along an annulus cobounded by seiferters. Successive twists along a "hyperbolic seiferter" or a "hyperbolic annular pair" produce infinitely many Seifert surgeries on hyperbolic knots. In this paper, we investigate …
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.
A pair of surgeries on a knot is called purely cosmetic if the pair of resulting 3-manifolds are homeomorphic as oriented manifolds. Using recent work of Hanselman, we show that (nontrivial) knots which arise as the closure of a 3-stranded braid do not admit any purely cosmetic surgeries.
A Seifert surgery is a pair (K, m) of a knot K in the 3-sphere and an integer m such that m-Dehn surgery on K results in a Seifert fiber space allowed to contain fibers of index zero. Twisting K along a trivial knot called a seiferter for (K, m) yields Seifert surgeries. We study Seifert surgeries obtained from those on a trefoil knot by twisting along their seiferters. Although Seifert surgeries on a trefoil knot are the most basic ones, this family is rich in variety. For any m which is not -2 it contains a successive triple of Seifert surgeries (K, m), (K, m +1), (K, m +2) on a hyperbolic k…
We give sufficient conditions for a satellite knot to admit an L-space surgery, and use this result to give new infinite families of patterns which produce satellite L-space knots.
We prove that there are exactly $6$ Nil Seifert fibred spaces which can be obtained by Dehn surgeries on non-trefoil knots in $S^3$, with $\{60, 144, 156, 288, 300\}$ as the exact set of all such surgery slopes up to taking the mirror images of the knots. We conjecture that there are exactly $4$ specific hyperbolic knots in $S^3$ which admit Nil Seifert fibred surgery. We also give some more general results and a more general conjecture concerning Seifert fibred surgeries on hyperbolic knots in $S^3$.
We give a complete classification of toroidal Seifert fibered surgeries on alternating knots. Precisely, we show that if an alternating knot admits a toroidal Seifert fibered surgery, then the knot is either the trefoil knot and the surgery slope is zero, or the connected sum of a (2,p)-torus knot and a (2,q)-torus knot and the surgery slope is 2(p+q) with |p|, |q| at least three.
We find an infinite family of Seifert fibered surgeries on strongly invertible knots which do not have primitive/Seifert positions. Each member of the family is obtained from a trefoil knot after alternate twists along a pair of seiferters for a Seifert fibered surgery on a trefoil knot.
In this paper, we prove that there are no truly cosmetic surgeries on genus one classical knots. If the two surgery slopes have the same sign, we give the only possibilities of reflectively cosmetic surgeries. The result is an application of Heegaard Floer theory and number theory.
We consider the question of when a slice knot admits a reducible Dehn surgery. By analyzing the correction terms associated to such a surgery, we show that slice knots cannot admit surgeries with more than two summands. We also give a necessary Heegaard Floer theoretic condition for a positive cable of a knot to be slice.
We show that a special alternating knot with sufficiently large number (more than $63$) of twist regions has no chirally cosmetic surgeries, a pair of Dehn surgeries producing orientation-reversingly homeomorphic $3$-manifolds. In the course of proof, we provide the optimal upper bounds of the primitive finite type invariants of degree 2 and 3 that solve Willerton's conjecture.
A rational homology sphere whose Heegaard Floer homology is the same as that of a lens space is called an L-space. We classify pretzel knots with any number of tangles which admit L-space surgeries. This rests on Gabai's classification of fibered pretzel links.
