Necessary and sufficient condition for Lorenz knots to be closed under satellite construction (Q1125108)

Knots as periodic orbits of a dynamic system are quite interesting. Birman and Williams studied more systematically positive braids and fibered knots from the Lorenz ordinary differential equation (those knots and links are called Lorenz knots and Lorenz links). See \textit{R. W. Ghrist, Ph. J. Holmes} and \textit{M. C. Sullivan}'s book [Knots and links in three-dimensional flows, Lect. Notes Math. 1654 (1997; Zbl 0869.58044)] on the realization of all knots and links from a single dynamic system. The paper under review is to give the necessary and sufficient condition for Lorenz knots to be closed under the satellite construction. Every link can be constructed from the closure of a braid by Alexander's theorem. The Lorenz link is a closure of a special braid with two groups of parallel strands in the Artin braid group \(B_n\) (one group of \(r\) strands pass over the other group of \(k\) strands, the strands in the same group never cross one another, \(k+r = n\)). The Lorenz link is of type \(\beta (k, r)\). The satellite knot of Lorenz knot is again a Lorenz knot representing the closure of \(\Delta_r^{2k} \beta_1 (a, r) \beta_2 (r, b)\) with Lorenz braid \(\beta_i\) (\(i=1, 2\)). The main result (Theorem 3.9) shows that a Lorenz knot as a satellite of a Lorenz knot must have the braid representative \(\Delta_r^{2k} \beta_1 (a, r) \beta_2 (r, b)\). The proof follows from several steps. (i) Putting the \(T \cap H\) in minimal states by a technique of Williams, where \(T\) is the separating torus of the satellite and \(H\) is the Lorenz knot holder; (ii) The sewed Lorenz knot holder \(SH\) intersects with \(T\) transversally and forms a graph \(\Gamma\), using the Euler characteristic computation, the graph \(\Gamma\) is not a tree since \[ \chi (\Gamma) = - \frac{k+r}{2} = -{n\over 2} \neq 1. \] Thus the graph contains circuits generating its fundamental group; (iii) the graph \(\Gamma\) is connected with \(\frac{k+r}{2}\) boundaries; (iv) using first step (1) to eliminate all possible cases except two boundary points, the author completes the argument.