Partial duals of plane graphs, separability and the graphs of knots

There is a well-known way to describe a link diagram as a (signed) plane graph, called its Tait graph. This concept was recently extended, providing a way to associate a set of embedded graphs (or ribbon graphs) to a link diagram. While every plane graph arises as a Tait graph of a unique link diagram, not every embedded graph represents a link diagram. Furthermore, although a Tait graph describes a unique link diagram, the same embedded graph can represent many different link diagrams. One is then led to ask which embedded graphs represent link diagrams, and how link diagrams presented by the same embedded graphs are related to one another. Here we answer these questions by characterizing the class of embedded graphs that represent link diagrams, and then using this characterization to find a move that relates all of the link diagrams that are presented by the same set of embedded graphs.Comment: v2: major change

Angled decompositions of arborescent link complements

This paper describes a way to subdivide a 3-manifold into angled blocks, namely polyhedral pieces that need not be simply connected. When the individual blocks carry dihedral angles that fit together in a consistent fashion, we prove that a manifold constructed from these blocks must be hyperbolic. The main application is a new proof of a classical, unpublished theorem of Bonahon and Siebenmann: that all arborescent links, except for three simple families of exceptions, have hyperbolic complements.Comment: 42 pages, 23 figures. Slightly expanded exposition and reference

Explicit Dehn filling and Heegaard splittings

We prove an explicit, quantitative criterion that ensures the Heegaard surfaces in Dehn fillings behave "as expected." Given a cusped hyperbolic manifold X, and a Dehn filling whose meridian and longitude curves are longer than 2pi(2g-1), we show that every genus g Heegaard splitting of the filled manifold is isotopic to a splitting of the original manifold X. The analogous statement holds for fillings of multiple boundary tori. This gives an effective version of a theorem of Moriah-Rubinstein and Rieck-Sedgwick.Comment: 17 pages. v3 contains minor revisions and cleaner arguments, incorporating referee comments. To appear in Communications in Analysis and Geometr

Links with no exceptional surgeries

We show that if a knot admits a prime, twist-reduced diagram with at least 4 twist regions and at least 6 crossings per twist region, then every non-trivial Dehn filling of that knot is hyperbolike. A similar statement holds for links. We prove this using two arguments, one geometric and one combinatorial. The combinatorial argument further implies that every link with at least 2 twist regions and at least 6 crossings per twist region is hyperbolic and gives a lower bound for the genus of a link.Comment: 28 pages, 15 figures. Minor rewording and organizational changes; also added theorem giving a lower bound on the genus of these link

Fiber detection for state surfaces

Every Kauffman state \sigma of a link diagram D(K) naturally defines a state surface S_\sigma whose boundary is K. For a homogeneous state \sigma, we show that K is a fibered link with fiber surface S_\sigma if and only if an associated graph G'_\sigma is a tree. As a corollary, it follows that for an adequate knot or link, the second and next-to-last coefficients of the Jones polynomial are obstructions to certain state surfaces being fibers for K. This provides a dramatically simpler proof of a theorem from [arXiv:1108.3370].Comment: 6 pages, 5 figures. v2 features minor revisions. To appear in Algebraic & Geometric Topolog

Spectrally Similar Incommensurable 3-Manifolds

Reid has asked whether hyperbolic manifolds with the same geodesic length spectrum must be commensurable. Building toward a negative answer to this question, we construct examples of hyperbolic 3–manifolds that share an arbitrarily large portion of the length spectrum but are not commensurable. More precisely, for every n ≫ 0, we construct a pair of incommensurable hyperbolic 3–manifolds Nn and Nµn whose volume is approximately n and whose length spectra agree up to length n. Both Nn and Nµn are built by gluing two standard submanifolds along a complicated pseudo-Anosov map, ensuring that these manifolds have a very thick collar about an essential surface. The two gluing maps differ by a hyper-elliptic involution along this surface. Our proof also involves a new commensurability criterion based on pairs of pants