Cyclic surgery, degrees of maps of character curves, and volume rigidity for hyperbolic manifolds (Q1298093)

Let \(K\) be a knot in a homotopy 3-sphere such that the complement of \(K\) is hyperbolic and contains no closed essential surface. The main result of the paper, conjectured by Boyer and Zhang, says that if some non-trivial surgery on \(K\) gives a 3-manifold with cyclic fundamental group then there is an essential surface in the exterior of \(K\) whose boundary slope is non-integral (and lies in the interval \((r-1,r+1)\) if the cyclic surgery had slope \(r\); the first and best-known example of a hyperbolic knot with such a cyclic surgery, and also with a non-integral boundary slope, was the \((-2,3, 7)\) pretzel knot). As a consequence, if the knot \(K\) has only integral boundary slopes then it has Property P, i.e. non-trivial surgery on \(K\) never produces a 3-manifold with trivial fundamental group. The proof of the main theorem uses a new result about the \(PSL_2\mathbb{C}\)-character variety of the (fundamental group of the exterior of the) knot stating that, for an irreducible component \(X_0\) of this variety, the map from \(X_0\) to the character variety of the boundary torus of the exterior (induced by inclusion) is a birational isomorphism onto its image. This result in turn depends on a Gromov-Thurston-Goldman volume rigidity theorem for \(PSL_2\mathbb{C}\)-representations of hyperbolic 3-manifold groups: if a \(PSL_2\mathbb{C}\)-representation of a hyperbolic 3-manifold has the same ``volume'' as the 3-manifold then the representation is discrete and faithful. The connection with the main result is the techniques introduced by Culler and Shalen which connect the topology of a hyperbolic 3-manifold with its \(PSL_2\mathbb{C}\)-character variety. For a nice description of the background of the paper and the main ideas involved we recommend the detailed introduction to it.