Finiteness of the image of the Reidemeister torsion of a splice (Q2221748)

The set \(RT(M)\) of values of the \(SL(2,\mathbb C)\)-Reidemeister torsion of a \(3\)-manifold \(M\) can be both finite and infinite. In this paper, the authors prove that \(RT(M)\) is a finite set if \(M\) is the splice of two certain knots in the \(3\)-sphere. In particular, for any \(2\)-bridge knots \(K_1\) and \(K_2\), the set \(RT(\Sigma(K_1,K_2))\) is finite, where \(\Sigma(K_1,K_2)\) is the splice of \(K_1\) and \(K_2\). Moreover, the authors concretely describe the character variety \(X(K,K)\) for the cases where \(K\) is the trefoil knot or figure eight knot.