Right-angled polyhedra and alternating links (Q2163647)

In this paper, the authors associate with any reduced prime alternating link a collection of hyperbolic right-angled ideal polyhedra, which they describe in equivalent ways from the geometric, topological and combinatorial perspectives. The set of hyperbolic right-angled polyhedra is a link invariant, and the sum of their hyperbolic volumes is a new numerical invariant of prime alternating links which the authors call the right-angled volume of such a link. They give an explicit procedure to compute this invariant from any alternating link diagram and they prove that it is a lower bound for the hyperbolic volume of the link.