On composite tunnel number one links (Q1336618)

An invariant of classical knots which is closely related to Heegaard splittings is the ``tunnel number'', the minimum number of arcs which need to be attached to the knot before the complement becomes a handlebody. It is known that tunnel number one knots are prime and links with three or more components have tunnel number at least two. Then every composite tunnel number one link has exactly two components and is a connected sum of a knot \(K\) and a 2-component link \(L\). In this paper the author shows that the connected sum of a knot \(K\) and a 2-component link \(L\) has tunnel number one if and only if \(K\) is a 2- bridge knot and \(L\) is the Hopf link, and moreover an unknotting tunnel for it is isotopic to one of four tunnels which is obtained from the upper or lower tunnels for the 2-bridge knot \(K\).