Symmetries of fibered knots (Q1891989)

In this paper, ``knot'' means an \((n-2)\)-connected closed smooth codimension 2 submanifold \(K\) of \(S=S^{2n+1}\), with \(n\geq3\). It is assumed throughout that \((S,K)\) is simple (i.e., \(S-K\) has the homotopy type of \(S^1\) up to dimension \(n-1\)) and fibered (i.e., \(S-K\) is a bundle over \(S^1\)). The most important examples of such knots, given special emphasis in this paper, are algebraic knots (links of isolated singular points of algebraic hypersurfaces in \(\mathbb{C}^{n-1}\)). The authors are interested in actions of a finite cyclic group \(\mathbb{Z}_m\) on \(S\) which are either free with \(K\) an invariant set or semifree with the fixed point set equal to \(K\). In the former case, they assume that the induced action on \(H_*(K)\) is trivial, that the restriction of the action to the boundary \(K\times S^1\) of an invariant tubular neighborhood of \(K\) projects to a free action on \(S^1\), and that \(K\) is a rational homology sphere (in the case of a semifree action these three conditions are satisfied automatically). One of the main theorems states that, under the given hypotheses, the existence of a free action on \((S,K)\) is equivalent to the existence of a semifree action. The main tool used in proving this and other results is the derived knot of \((S,K)\); this is the essentially unique knot \(K^*\subset S\) (whose existence is proved in the paper) such that \(K^*\) is diffeomorphic to \(K\) and \(S-K^*\) is diffeomorphic to the orbit space of \(S-K\). The authors prove that two knots \((S,K_1)\), \((S,K_2)\), both equipped with a free or semifree \(\mathbb{Z}_m\) action, are equivariantly homeomorphic if and only if their derived knots are isotopic and -- in the case of free action -- the normal bundles of \(K_1\) and \(K_2\) are equivariantly isomorphic. The existence problem is treated essentially via derived knots as well. Two theorems are proved which give necessary and sufficient conditions for the existence of an \(\mathbb{Z}_m\) action on \((S,K)\); in the first theorem the conditions are in terms of the intersection form \(H_n(F)\times H_n(F)\to\mathbb{Z}\) for the fiber \(F\) of the bundle \(S-K\to S^1\) and the monodromy operator \(H_n(F)\to H_n(F)\), and in the second theorem in terms of the Alexander polynomial of \(K\).