Knot groups and residual nilpotence (Q2317359)

It is shown that the commutator subgroup of a welded knot group coincides with the third term of its lower central series. It is also shown that the group \(G\) of the virtual trefoil satisfies that the first five terms of its lower central series are different. So, there exist epimorphisms of \(G\) onto nilpotent groups of class 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5. The authors use the Magnus representation to construct a homomorphism of \(G\) to a finite-dimensional algebra and find a linear representation of \(G\).