The orientable cusped hyperbolic \(3\)-manifolds of minimum volume (Q1608547)

It is a result of Thurston (based on work of Jørgsen and Gromov) that the set of volumes of compact or cusped hyperbolic \(3\)-manifolds is well-ordered and of order type \(\omega^\omega\); moreover each element of the set is the volume of a finite number of manifolds. In particular, any given subset of the set of all compact or cusped hyperbolic manifolds contains a finite subset on which the minimum volume is attained. The manifolds realizing the minimum volume have been identified for some subsets of manifolds (i.e., non-orientable cusped manifolds [\textit{C. C. Adams}, Proc. Am. Math. Soc. 100, 601-606 (1987; Zbl 0634.57008)], manifolds with totally geodesic boundary [\textit{S. Kojima} and \textit{Y. Miyamoto}, J. Differ. Geom. 34, 175-192 (1992; Zbl 0729.53042)]). Probably the most interesting case is that of orientable cusped manifolds, for which it was conjectured that the minimum volume is twice the volume of the ideal regular tetrahedron and that the only two manifolds with this volume are the complement of the figure-eight knot in the 3-sphere and that of its sibling, i.e. the manifold obtained by \((5,1)\)-Dehn surgery on one component of the Whitehead link. Remark that, since hyperbolic Dehn surgery lowers volume, the minimizing manifolds have necessarily a unique cusp. Notice that the figure-eight knot complement is a double cover of the Gieseking manifold, which is the unique non-orientable cusped manifold of minimum volume. Notice, however, that this is not sufficient to conclude that the minimum volume for orientable cusped manifolds is twice the volume of the ideal regular tetrahedron (i.e. the volume of the figure-eight knot complement or twice the volume of the Giesekin manifold), for there might exist orientable cusped manifolds which do not cover non-orientable ones. The above conjecture is proved in the paper under review, thanks to an analysis of the horoball lifts of the maximal cusp neighbourhood. Some proofs require computer calculations: the authors are very careful in checking that no error is introduced in these parts of the proof, as thoroughly pointed out in the introduction. It is worth observing that it is reasonable to expect that the closed orientable hyperbolic manifolds of minimum volume can be obtained by hyperbolic Dehn surgery on the figure-eight knot complement and its sibling. This is indeed the case for the closed manifolds of smallest known volume, computed with the help of J. Weeks' SnapPea.