Periodicity and the monodromy theorem (Q1919630)

The article treats a certain family of high-dimensional knots and answers two questions: (1) whether the knots in the family admit \(\mathbb{Z}_m\)-actions for all \(m\), and (2) whether they admit \(\mathbb{Z}_m\)-actions for infinitely many \(m\). The family consists of high-dimensional simple knots \(k=(S^{2n+1}, K^{2n-1})\), \(n>2\), being either a spherical knot or a highly connected fibered knot (e.g. algebraic knots which are rational homology spheres). The main result is, for a knot \(k\) in the family, that \(k\) admits \(\mathbb{Z}_m\)-actions for all \(m\) if and only if it is the unknot, and that \(k\) admits \(\mathbb{Z}_m\)-actions for infinitely many \(m\) if and only if the rational monodromy matrix for \(k\) is periodic. For example, the connected sum of some high-dimensional torus knots admits \(\mathbb{Z}_m\)-actions for infinitely many \(m\). On the other hand, there exist high-dimensional knots which are not connected sums of torus knots, but which have infinitely many periods.