Characterising slopes for hyperbolic knots and Whitehead doubles
Abstract
A slope is characterising for a knot if the oriented homeomorphism type of the manifold obtained by Dehn surgery of slope on uniquely determines the knot . We combine analysis of JSJ decompositions with techniques involving lengths of shortest geodesics to find explicit conditions for a slope to be characterising for in the case where is any hyperbolic knot or any satellite knot by a hyperbolic pattern. Assuming that the list of 2-cusped orientable hyperbolic 3-manifolds obtained using the computer programme SnapPy is complete up to a certain point, we use hyperbolic volume inequalities to generate a refinement for the special case of Whitehead doubles. We also construct pairs of multiclasped Whitehead doubles of double twist knots for which is a non-characterising slope.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.2304.04349,
title = {Characterising slopes for hyperbolic knots and Whitehead doubles},
author = {Laura Wakelin},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2304.04349},
year = {2026}
}
Comments
28 pages, 8 figures, 5 tables. Revised title. Accepted for publication in Algebraic & Geometric Topology