Every knot has characterising slopes

Let K be a knot in the 3-sphere. A slope p/q is said to be characterising for K if whenever p/q surgery on K is homeomorphic, via an orientation-preserving homeomorphism, to p/q surgery on another knot K in the 3-sphere, then K and K are isotopic. It was an old conjecture of Gordon, proved by Kronhe...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autor Principal: Lackenby, M
Formato: Journal article
Publicado: Springer Berlin Heidelberg 2018
Descripción
Summary:Let K be a knot in the 3-sphere. A slope p/q is said to be characterising for K if whenever p/q surgery on K is homeomorphic, via an orientation-preserving homeomorphism, to p/q surgery on another knot K in the 3-sphere, then K and K are isotopic. It was an old conjecture of Gordon, proved by Kronheimer, Mrowka, Ozsváth and Szabó, that every slope is characterising for the unknot. In this paper, we show that every knot K has infinitely many characterising slopes, confirming a conjecture of Baker and Motegi. In fact, p/q is characterising for K provided |p| is at most |q| and |q| is sufficiently large.