Persistently foliar composite knots (Q2059699)

The L-space conjecture partially claims that an irreducible \(3\)-manifold contains a cooriented taut foliation if and only if it is not an L-space. A knot is called an L-space knot if it admits a nontrivial Dehn surgery yielding an L-space. The authors introduce the notion of persistently foliar knot. A knot is said to be persistently foliar if for each nontrivial boundary slope, there is a cooriented taut foliation meeting the boundary of the knot exterior transversely in a foliation by curves of that slope. In particular, capping off by disks yields a cooriented taut foliation in the resulting manifold of Dehn surgery. Thus it is expected that a knot is persistently foliar if and only if it is not an L-space knot and has no reducible surgeries. The main result of the paper under review is to prove that if at least one summand of a composite knot is persistently foliar, so is the composite knot. Also, any connected sum of nontrivial fibered knots is shown to be persistently foliar. A conjecture claims that every composite knot is persistently foliar. Roughly speaking, foliations are constructed from a spine and a branched surface which carries a lamination extending to a foliation. The paper contains many high quality figures to help understanding of the argument.