Related papers: L-spaces, left-orderability and two-bridge knots

We exhibit braid positive presentations for all L-space knots in the SnapPy census except one, which is not braid positive. The normalized HOMFLY polynomial of o9_30634, when suitably normalized is not positive, failing a condition of Ito…

A folding of a branched cover of the 3-sphere that is branched over a knot is a continuous map of the cover into the product of the sphere with a disk that has the property that the projection onto the sphere factor induces the covering.…

The strong cycle double cover conjecture states that for every circuit $C$ of a bridgeless cubic graph $G$, there is a cycle double cover of $G$ which contains $C$. We conjecture that there is even a 5-cycle double cover $S$ of $G$ which…

Every stable 4-sphere is identified with the double branched covering space of a trivial surface-knot space. As a result of Wall, it is known that any two orthogonal bases of every stable 4-sphere are transformed into each other by an…

In this paper we apply the twisted Alexander polynomial to study the fibering and genus detecting problems for oriented links. In particular we generalize a conjecture of Dunfield, Friedl and Jackson on the torsion polynomial of hyperbolic…

For any two-bridge link or 3-tangle Montesinos link $L\subset S^3$ (including knot), this paper proves that $\pi_1(S^3-L)$ is profinitely rigid among the fundamental groups of compact orientable 3-manifolds.

For a knot in the 3-sphere, the Upsilon invariant is a piecewise linear function defined on the interval [0,2]. For an L-space knot, the Upsilon invariant is determined only by the Alexander polynomial of the knot. We exhibit infinitely…

We show that any parabolic generating pair of a genus-one hyperbolic 2-bridge knot group is equivalent to the upper or lower meridian pair. As an application, we obtain a complete classification of the epimorphisms from 2-bridge knot groups…

In this short note we show the existence of an epimorphism between groups of $2$-bridge knots by means of an elementary argument using the Riley polynomial. As a corollary, we give a classification of $2$-bridge knots by Riley polynomials.

We give a complete characterization of the topological slice status of odd 3-strand pretzel knots, proving that an odd 3-strand pretzel knot is topologically slice if and only if either it is ribbon or has trivial Alexander polynomial. (By…

In this paper we show that if $n\geq 5$ and $G$ is any of the groups $SU_n(q)$ with $n\neq 6,$ $Sp_{2n}(q)$ with $q$ odd, $\Omega_{2n+1}(q),$ $\Omega_{2n}^{\pm}(q),$ then $G$ and the simple group $\barG=G/Z(G)$ are not 2-coverable. Moreover…

We give a construction of hyperbolic 3-manifolds with rank two fundamental groups and report an experimental search to find such manifolds. Our manifolds are all surface bundles over the circle with genus two surface fiber. For the…

We prove that if positive integer p-surgery along a knot K \subset S^3 produces an L-space and it bounds a sharp 4-manifold, then the knot genus obeys the bound 2g(K) -1 \leq p - \sqrt{3p+1}. Moreover, there exists an infinite family of…

For even $n$ we prove that the genus of the complete tripartite graph $K_{n,n,1}$ is $\lceil (n-1) (n-2)/4 \rceil$. This is the least number of bridges needed to build a complete $n$-way road interchange where changing lanes is not allowed.…

For a cyclic covering map $(\Sigma,K) \to (\Sigma',K')$ between two pairs of a 3-manifold and a knot each, we describe the fundamental group $\pi_1(\Sigma \setminus K)$ in terms of $\pi_1(\Sigma' \setminus K')$. As a consequence, we give an…

We give a necessary, and in some cases sufficient, condition for sliceness inside the family of pretzel knots $P (p_1,...,p_n)$ with one $p_i$ even. The three stranded case yields two interesting families of examples: the first consists of…

In this paper we define the equivariant double-slice genus and equivariant super-slice genus of a strongly invertible knot. We prove lower bounds for both the equivariant double-slice genus and the equivariant super-slice genus. Using these…

A knot in the 3-sphere in genus-1 1-bridge position (called a (1,1)-position) can be described by an element of the braid group of two points in the torus. Our main results tell how to translate between a braid group element and the…

The class ${\cal L}_k$ of $k$-leaf powers consists of graphs $G=(V,E)$ that have a $k$-leaf root, that is, a tree $T$ with leaf set $V$, where $xy \in E$, if and only if the $T$-distance between $x$ and $y$ is at most $k$. Structure and…

The monoids l_{2q+1}(Z[\pi]) detect s-cobordisms amongst certain bordisms between stably diffeomorphic 2q-dimensional manifolds and generalise the Wall simple surgery obstruction groups, L_{2q+1}^s(Z[\pi]) \subset l_{2q+1}(Z[\pi]). In this…