Banchoff's sphere and branched covers over the trefoil (Q1671974)

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Banchoff's sphere and branched covers over the trefoil
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    Banchoff's sphere and branched covers over the trefoil (English)
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    7 September 2018
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    The paper reviews key definitions and results concerning filling Dehn surfaces in 3-manifolds. It then describes a technique for computing the fundamental group of a link complement in a 3-manifold, $M^3\backslash L$, in terms of a Johansson diagram of $L$. Data contained in this diagram also suffices to represent covers of $M$ branched along $L$. This is illustrated on the trefoil knot, whose $n$-fold cyclic branched covers and 3-fold irregular branched cover are determined. In fact, one checks easily by other methods that the 3-fold irregular branched cover of any two-bridge knot is $S^3$. It would be interesting to see if the authors' argument for the trefoil admits a natural extension to the general case of two-bridge knots.
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    3-manifold
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    immersed surface
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    filling Dehn surface
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    link
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    knot
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    branched covering
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