English

Noncyclic covers of knot complements

Geometric Topology 2014-06-10 v4

Abstract

Hempel has shown that the fundamental groups of knot complements are residually finite. This implies that every nontrivial knot must have a finite-sheeted, noncyclic cover. We give an explicit bound, Φ(c)\Phi (c), such that if KK is a nontrivial knot in the three-sphere with a diagram with cc crossings and a particularly simple JSJ decomposition then the complement of KK has a finite-sheeted, noncyclic cover with at most Φ(c)\Phi (c) sheets.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.math/0401120,
  title  = {Noncyclic covers of knot complements},
  author = {Nathan Broaddus},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:math/0401120},
  year   = {2014}
}

Comments

29 pages, 8 figures, from Ph.D. thesis at Columbia University; Acknowledgments added; Content corrected

R2 v1 2026-07-22T17:01:28.917Z