Examples of bireducible Dehn fillings. (Q1880031)

Gordon and Luecke [\textit{C. McA. Gordon} and \textit{J. Luecke}, Topology 35, No. 2, 385--409 (1996; Zbl 0859.57016)] showed that for an irreducible \(3\)-manifold \(M\) bounded by a torus there are at most three distinct boundary slopes for which Dehn fillings produce reducible manifolds. \(M\) admits \textit{bireducible Dehn fillings} if Dehn fillings along two distinct slopes result in reducible manifolds. Examples of bireducible Dehn fillings were given by \textit{C. McA. Gordon} and \textit{R. A. Litherland} [Topology Appl. 18, 121--144 (1984; Zbl 0554.57010)] and \textit{M. Eudave-Muñoz} and \textit{Y.-Q. Wu} [Pac. J. Math. 190, No. 2, 261--275 (1999; Zbl 1011.57005)]. In this paper the authors construct three infinite families of hyperbolic 3-manifolds, \(M_2^t,M_3^t,M_4^t\), parameterized by an integer \(t\), each admitting bireducible Dehn fillings. Since the manifolds are hyperbolic, they represent counterexamples to the generalization of the cabling conjecture by \textit{F. J. González-Acuña} and \textit{H. Short} [Math. Proc. Camb. Philos. Soc. 99, 89--102 (1986; Zbl 0591.57002)]. The authors construct these families explicitly by removing a regular neighborhood of a component of a \(5\)-component link in \(S^3\) and performing Dehn surgery on the remaining four components. For each member of the family, the bireducible Dehn fillings of the resulting boundary torus produce connected sums of two lens spaces.