Surfaces, surgery and unknotting operations (Q1364374)

When surgery on a knot in a 3-manifold reduces the Thurston norm of a homology class or yields a reducible manifold, we prove that the knot can often be isotoped away from a given surface in the manifold. As applications of this result, we extend Scharlemann's theorem that unknotting number one knots in the 3-sphere are prime. We also examine the surgical properties of knots which can be unknotted by generalized crossing changes. We investigate when a generalized crossing change yields a split link. Finally, we prove that fibred knots in the 3-sphere cannot be unknotted by certain generalized crossing changes.