Exceptional surgery curves in triangulated 3-manifolds. (Q1880051)

A Dehn surgery along a knot \(K\) in a \(3\)-manifold \(M\) with slope \(\sigma\) is called exceptional if the resulting 3-manifold \(M_K(\sigma)\) is reducible or a solid torus, or the core of the surgery solid torus has finite order in \(\pi_1(M_K(\sigma))\). The main result proved in the paper is the following. Let \(M\) be a compact connected orientable 3-manifold, with \(\partial M\) a (possibly empty) union of tori, then there are only a finite number of exceptional surgery pairs \((K,\sigma)\), up to ambient isotopy, such that \text {\(M-\text{int} ({\mathcal N}(K))\)} is irreducible and atoroidal, \(H_2(M-\text{int} ({\mathcal N}(K)),\partial M)\neq 0\), and \text {\(\Delta(\sigma,\mu_K)>1\)}, where \text {\(\Delta(\sigma,\mu_K)\)} is the intersection number on \(\partial {\mathcal N}(K)\) between the surgery slope and the meridian slope of \(K\). Moreover, the author provides a simple algorithm to find all these surgery curves. As a consequence, some results about the finiteness of certain unknotting operations on knots in the 3-sphere are obtained.