The homology of irregular dihedral branched covers of \(S^ 3\) (Q1891212)

Hilden and Montesinos proved in the early 1970's that every closed oriented 3-manifold is a 3-fold dihedral cover of \(S^3\), branched over a knot. For other odd primes \(p\neq 3\) this result is not true any more. For example, if \(M^3\to S^3\) is a \(p\)-fold branched dihedral cover then the first Betti number of \(M\) is divisible by \((p-1)/2\). In fact, \(H_iM\) are modules over the ring \(R=\mathbb{Z} [\lambda]\), where \(\lambda=\zeta + \zeta^{-1}\) with \(\zeta\) a primitive \(p\)-th root of unity. In this note, the author gives a necessary and sufficient condition for a pair of \(R\)-modules to be \(H_1M\) and \(H_2M\) for a \(p\)-fold branched dihedral cover \(M^3\to S^3\). This condition is formulated in terms of the ideal class group of the Dedekind domain \(R\) as well as in terms of an explicite condition on the relation matrices for the modules.