Reidemeister torsion, twisted Alexander polynomial and fibered knots (Q1772467)

As a classical result, the Alexander polynomial of a fibered knot is monic. However, the converse is not true. The paper under review shows, as a generalization of the above result, that the Reidemeister torsion associated to a unimodular representation of the knot group to \(SL(2,\mathbb{F})\) of a fibered knot is expressed as a rational function of monic polynomials, where \(\mathbb{F}\) is a field. In fact, this Reidemeister torsion is nothing but the twisted Alexander polynomial defined by \textit{M. Wada} [Topology 33, No. 2, 241--256 (1994; Zbl 0822.57006)]. By the main theorem, the Kinoshita-Terasaka knot, whose Alexander polynomial is trivial, is detected to be non-fibered. Conversely, it is an open question whether any non-fibered knot admits a unimodular representation whose associated Reidemeister torsion is not monic.