Free Seifert surfaces and disk decompositions

In this paper we construct families of knots which have genus one free Seifert surfaces which are not disk decomposable. Received: 24 October 2000; in final form: 1 August 2001 / Published online: 4 April 2002     

Totally knotted Seifert surfaces with accidental peripherals

We show that if there exists an essential accidental surface in the knot exterior, then a closed accidental surface also exists. As its corollary, we know boundary slopes of accidental essential surfaces are integral or meridional. It is shown that an accidental incompressible Seifert surface in knot exteriors in is totally knotted. Examples of satellite knots with arbitrarily high genus Seifert surfaces with accidental peripherals are given, and a Haken 3-manifold which contains a hyperbolic knot with an accidental incompressible Seifert surface of genus one is also given.

     

Generalized Seifert surfaces and signatures of colored links

In this paper, we use `generalized Seifert surfaces' to extend the Levine-Tristram signature to colored links in . This yields an integral valued function on the -dimensional torus, where is the number of colors of the link. The case corresponds to the Levine-Tristram signature. We show that many remarkable properties of the latter invariant extend to this -variable generalization: it vanishes for achiral colored links, it is `piecewise continuous', and the places of the jumps are determined by the Alexander invariants of the colored link. Using a -dimensional interpretation and the Atiyah-Singer -signature theorem, we also prove that this signature is invariant by colored concordance, and that it provides a lower bound for the `slice genus' of the colored link.

     

Boundary slopes of non-orientable Seifert surfaces for knots

We study non-orientable Seifert surfaces for knots in the 3-sphere, and examine their boundary slopes. In particular, it is shown that for a crosscap number two knot, there are at most two slopes which can be the boundary slope of its minimal genus non-orientable Seifert surface, and an infinite family of knots with two such slopes will be described. Also, we discuss the existence of essential non-orientable Seifert surfaces for knots.     

Conjugacy separability of Seifert 3-manifold groups over non-orientable surfaces

Scott (1978) [12] showed Seifert 3-manifold groups are subgroup separable. Niblo (1992) [9] improved this result by showing that these groups are double coset separable. In Allenby, Kim and Tang (2005) [2] it was shown that all but two types of groups in the orientable case are conjugacy separable. Martino (2007) [7] using topological results showed that Seifert groups are conjugacy separable. Here we use algebraic method to show that Seifert groups over non-orientable surfaces are conjugacy separable.     

Hyperbolic knots spanning accidental Seifert surfaces of arbitrarily high genus

A method for constructing hyperbolic knots each of which bounds accidental incompressible Seifert surfaces of arbitrarily high genus is given. Mathematics Subject Classification (2000):57N10, 57M25.The author was supported in part by Research Fellowships of the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science for Young Scientists.     

Homogeneous links, Seifert surfaces, digraphs and the reduced Alexander polynomial

We give a geometric proof of the following result of Juhasz. Let a _g be the leading coefficient of the Alexander polynomial of an alternating knot K. If |a _g | <  4 then K has a unique minimal genus Seifert surface. In doing so, we are able to generalise the result, replacing ‘minimal genus’ with ‘incompressible’ and ‘alternating’ with ‘homogeneous’. We also examine the implications of our proof for alternating links in general.     

Seifert surfaces in open books, and a new coding algorithm for links

We show that for any link L, there exists a Seifert surfacefor L that is obtained by successively plumbing flat annulito a disk D, where the gluing regions are all in D. This furnishesa new way of coding links. We also present an algorithm to readthe code directly from a braid presentation.     

Complex Symplectic Geometry of Quasi-Fuchsian Space

We study the complex symplectic geometry of the space QF(S) of quasi-Fuchsian structures of a compact orientable surface S of genus g > 1. We prove that QF(S) is a complex symplectic manifold. The complex symplectic structure is the complexification of the Weil–Petersson symplectic structure of Teichmüller space and is described in terms which look natural from the point of view of hyperbolic geometry.     

Seifert fibered surgeries with distinct primitive/Seifert positions

We call a pair (K,m) of a knot K in the 3-sphere S³ and an integer m a Seifert fibered surgery if m-surgery on K yields a Seifert fiber space. For most known Seifert fibered surgeries (K,m), K can be embedded in a genus 2 Heegaard surface of S³ in a primitive/Seifert position, the concept introduced by Dean as a natural extension of primitive/primitive position defined by Berge. Recently Guntel has given an infinite family of Seifert fibered surgeries each of which has distinct primitive/Seifert positions. In this paper we give yet other infinite families of Seifert fibered surgeries with distinct primitive/Seifert positions from a different point of view.     

Complex Hyperbolic Quasi-Fuchsian Groups and Toledo's Invariant

We consider discrete, faithful, type-preserving representations of the fundamental group of a punctured Riemann surface into PU(21), the holomorphic isometry group of complex hyperbolic space. Our main result is that there is a continuous family of such representations which interpolates between -Fuchsian representations and -Fuchsian representations. Moreover, these representations take every possible (real) value of the Toledo invariant. This contrasts with the case of closed surfaces where -Fuchsian and -Fuchsian representations lie in different components of the representation variety. In that case the Toledo invariant lies in a discrete set and indexes the components of the representation variety.     

On Kerckhoff Minima and Pleating Loci for Quasi-Fuchsian Groups

We show how Kerckhoff's results on minima of length functions on Teichmüller space can be used to analyse the possible bending loci of the boundary of the convex hull for quasi-Fuchsian groups near to the Fuchsian locus.     

Unknotting Tunnels and Seifert Surfaces

Let K be a knot with an unknotting tunnel and suppose thatK is not a 2-bridge knot. There is an invariant = p/q Q/2Z,with p odd, defined for the pair (K, ). The invariant has interesting geometric properties. It is oftenstraightforward to calculate; for example, for K a torus knotand an annulus-spanning arc, (K, ) = 1. Although is definedabstractly, it is naturally revealed when K is put in thinposition. If 1 then there is a minimal-genus Seifert surfaceF for K such that the tunnel can be slid and isotoped to lieon F. One consequence is that if (K, ) 1 then K > 1. Thisconfirms a conjecture of Goda and Teragaito for pairs (K, )with (K, ) 1. 2000 Mathematics Subject Classification 57M25,57M27.     

Seifert fibrations of lens spaces

We classify the Seifert fibrations of any given lens space L(p, q). Starting from any pair of coprime non-zero integers \(\alpha _1^0,\alpha _2^0\), we give an algorithmic construction of a Seifert fibration \(L(p,q)\rightarrow S^2(\alpha |\alpha _1^0|,\alpha |\alpha _2^0|)\), where the natural number \(\alpha \) is determined by the algorithm. This algorithm produces all possible Seifert fibrations, and the isomorphisms between the resulting Seifert fibrations are described completely. Also, we show that all Seifert fibrations are isomorphic to certain standard models.     

Triangulations of Seifert fibred manifolds

It is not completely unreasonable to expect that a computable function bounding the number of Pachner moves needed to change any triangulation of a given 3-manifold into any other triangulation of the same 3-manifold exists. In this paper we describe a procedure yielding an explicit formula for such a function if the 3-manifold in question is a Seifert fibred space.Revised version: 5 March 2004     

Seifert unions of solid tori

We obtain a list of all 3-manifolds that can be obtained by gluing 3-balls and solid tori along mutually disjoint surfaces in their boundaries. Received: 22 February 2001; in final form: 18 October 2001 / Published online: 4 April 2002