English

Explicit special covers of alternating links

Geometric Topology 2020-11-26 v2 Group Theory

Abstract

Given a prime, alternating link diagram, we build a special cover of the link complement whose degree is bounded by a factorial function of the crossing number. It follows that a subgroup of the link group of that index embeds into right-angled Artin and Coxeter groups. Corollaries of this result include a quantification of residual finiteness, control of the growth of Betti numbers in covers, and an explicit bound on the rank of a Z-module on which the link group acts faithfully.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1909.12266,
  title  = {Explicit special covers of alternating links},
  author = {Edgar A. Bering and David Futer},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1909.12266},
  year   = {2020}
}

Comments

Version 1 of the paper contains a basepoint error in Theorem 6.18. In the commutative diagram mentioned in the theorem-statement, the graph of spaces in the top row is not a cover of the graph of spaces in the bottom row, because the basepoints do not join up correctly. Unfortunately, this error invalidates the proof of the main theorem

R2 v1 2026-06-23T11:27:16.064Z