Totally geodesic Seifert surfaces in hyperbolic knot and link complements. I (Q2490389)

Define a knot or link \(L\) in the 3-sphere to be hyperbolic if its complement is a hyperbolic 3-manifold. This implies that there is a covering map \(p\) from \(\mathbb H^3\) to \(S^3-L\) such that the covering translations are isometries of \(\mathbb H^3\). We say that an embedded or immersed surface \(S\) in \(S^3-L\) is totally geodesic if it is isotopic to a surface that lifts to a set of geodesic planes in \(\mathbb H^3\). In this paper, the first examples of totally geodesic Seifert surfaces are constructed for hyperbolic knots and links, including both free and totally knotted surfaces. Further, it is proved that hyperbolic 2-bridge knots and links do not possess orientable totally geodesic surfaces.