Ribbon 2-knot groups of Coxeter type

Wirtinger presentations of deficiency 1 appear in the context of knots, long virtual knots, and ribbon 2-knots. They are encoded by (word) labeled oriented trees and, for that reason, are also called LOT presentations. These presentations are a well known and important testing ground for the validity (or failure) of Whitehead's asphericity conjecture. In this paper we define LOTs of Coxeter type and show that for every given $n$ there exists a (prime) LOT of Coxeter type with group of rank $n$. We also show that label separated Coxeter LOTs are aspherical

Minimal Seifert manifolds for higher ribbon knots

We show that a group presented by a labelled oriented tree presentation in which the tree has diameter at most three is an HNN extension of a finitely presented group. From results of Silver, it then follows that the corresponding higher dimensional ribbon knots admit minimal Seifert manifolds.Comment: 33 pages. Published copy, also available at http://www.maths.warwick.ac.uk/gt/GTMon1/paper12.abs.htm

Local indicability of groups with homology circle presentations

We investigate conditions that guarantee local indicability of groups that admit presentations with the homology of a circle, generalizing a result of J. Howie for two-relator presentations. We apply our results to investigate local indicability of LOT groups and some classes of non-cycle-free Adian presentations, extending previous results in that direction by J. Howie and D. Wise.Comment: 15 page

On the Logical Independence of (DR) and (CLA)

In 1941, J.H.C. Whitehead posed the question of whether asphericity is a hereditary property for 2-dimensional CW complexes. This question remains unanswered, but has led to the development of several algebraic and topological properties that are sufficient (but not necessary) for the asphericity of presentation 2-complexes. While many of the logical relationships between these flavors of asphericity are known, there remain a few to be answered. In particular, it has long been known that Cohen-Lyndon aspherical (CLA) complexes are not necessarily diagrammatically reducible (DR), but the existence of a (DR) complex which is not (CLA) remains open. We resolve this by showing that the presentation 2-complex associated to the presentation is (DR) but not (CLA). In fact, we prove that if a nontrivial group G occurs as the fundamental group of a (DR) 2-complex, then there is a (DR) 2-complex with fundamental group $G$ that is not (CLA)

w-Cycles in Surface Groups

For w an element in the fundamental group of a closed, orientable, hyperbolic surface Ω which is not a proper power, and Σ a surface immersing in Ω, we show that the number of distinct lifts of w to Σ is bounded above by -χ(Σ). In special cases which can be characterised by interdependencies of the lifts of w, we find a stronger bound, whereby the total degree of covering from curves in Σ representing the lifts to the curve representing w is also bounded above by -χ(Σ). This is achieved by a method we introduce for decomposing surfaces into pieces that behave similarly to graphs, and using them to estimate Euler characteristics using a stacking argument of the kind introduced by Louder and Wilton. We then consider some consequences of these bounds for quotients of orientable surface groups by a single element. We demonstrate ways in which these groups behave analogously to one-relator groups; in particular, the ones with torsion are coherent (i.e. all finitely-generated subgroups have finite presentations), and those without torsion possess the related property of non-positive immersions as introduced by Wise