Boundary slopes for knots (Q1917018)

This paper considers the possible boundary slopes for a punctured orientable surface of genus \(g>1\) in a torally bounded irreducible orientable 3-manifold \(M\). (The cases \(g=0\) and 1 were treated by \textit{C. McA. Gordon} and \textit{J. Luecke} [Only integral Dehn surgeries can yield reducible manifolds, Math. Proc. Camb. Philos. Soc. 102, 97-101 (1987)]). It is first shown that if \(M\) has no essential annulus then the distance \(\Delta(r,r')\) between slopes \(r\) and \(r'\) corresponding to incompressible, \(\partial\)-incompressible surfaces of genus \(g\geq 1\) and \(g'\geq 1\) is less than \(36(2g-1) (2g'-1)\). Similar arguments are then used to show that if a knot \(K\) has an \(m\)-string \(\partial\)-irreducible tangle decomposition then \(m<g(K)\), and to bound the denominators of the boundary slopes of genus \(g\) surfaces in the complements of such knots, and in the complements of composite knots. The paper concludes by using certain Montesinos knots (which have 2-string \(\partial\)-irreducible tangle decompositions) to illustrate the accuracy of these bounds for the denominators.