Bounds on exceptional Dehn filling (Q1586954)

Thurston proved that all but finitely many Dehn fillings of a hyperbolic knot complement yield hyperbolic \(3\)-manifolds. The fillings that yield an irreducible \(3\)-manifold with word-hyperbolic fundamental group (all known examples of such manifolds are actually hyperbolic) are called exceptional. \textit{S. A. Bleiler} and \textit{C. D. Hodgson} [Topology 35, No. 3, 809-833 (1996; Zbl 0863.57009)] showed that there are at most \(24\) exceptional fillings, using Gromov and Thurston's \(2\pi\)-theorem. In this paper, the author proves a modified version of the \(2\pi\)-theorem, and uses it to show that hyperbolic knot complements have at most \(12\) exceptional Dehn fillings, and that the intersection number between exceptional boundary slopes is at most \(10\). The example with the largest known values for these is the figure-\(8\) knot complement, which has \(10\) exceptional slopes, with maximum intersection number \(8\). The \(2\pi\)-theorem concerns a horocusp \(C\) in a hyperbolic \(3\)-manifold \(N\), that is, a neighborhood of the cusp which is a quotient of an open horoball in \(H^3\) by the torus group of the cusp. It boundary is a torus in \(N\) (possibly with some self-intersection), and if \(\alpha\) is an element of the torus group, then \(l_C(\alpha)\) denotes the length of a Euclidean geodesic loop in \(\partial C\) that represents \(\alpha\). The \(2\pi\)-theorem says that if \(l_C(\alpha)>2\pi\), then the manifold \(N(\alpha)\) obtained from \(N\) by Dehn filling along \(\alpha\) is hyperbolic. The author shows that if \(l_C(\alpha)>6\), then \(N(\alpha)\) is irreducible with word-hyperbolic fundamental group, i. e. \(\alpha\) is not exceptional. This \(6\)-theorem has also been obtained by \textit{M. Lackenby} [Invent. Math. 140, No. 2, 243-282 (2000; Zbl 0947.57016)]. A key technical step in the author's proof of the \(6\)-theorem involves an essential map \(f\colon S\to N\) from a surface of finite type without boundary carrying the cusps of \(S\) into \(C\). For each puncture \(p_i\) of \(S\), \(l_C(p_i)\) denotes the length of the corresponding slope in \(\partial C\), and the result is that the sum of the \(l_C(p_i)\) is at most \(6 |\chi(S)|\). The proof of the \(6\)-theorem also relies on Lackenby's version of Gabai's ubiquity theorem [\textit{D. Gabai}, Quasi-minimal semi-Euclidean laminations in \(3\)-manifolds, in `Surveys in differential geometry', Vol. III (Cambridge, MA, 1996), 195-242, Int. Press, Boston, MA, 1998]. The author also gives a criterion for a quasi-Fuchsian surface in a hyperbolic knot complement to remain \(\pi_1\)-injective under Dehn filling. Provided that all cusps (if any) of the surface map to the same boundary slope \(\alpha\), and \(l_C(\alpha)>6\), \(S\) remains \(\pi_1\)-injective after Dehn filling using \(\alpha\), and this bound is shown to be sharp.