Genera and fibredness of Montesinos knots (Q2373540)

The authors deal with the class of Montesinos knots in \(S^3\). They explicitly construct minimal genus Seifert surfaces for such knots and solve the question of when they are fibred knots. In order to do this, in almost all cases, they start with a Seifert surface obtained via Seifert's algorithm and, by applying the geometric technique of plumbing and deplumbing, they manage to reduce the problem to the known case of Pretzel knots, see \textit{D. Gabai} [Genera of the arborescent links, Mem. Am. Math. Soc. 339, 1--98 (1986; Zbl 0585.57003)] and \textit{T. Kanenobu} [Mat. Sem. Notes Kobe Univ. 7, 363--384 (1979; Zbl 0456.57002)]. In some special cases they construct a Seifert surface, which is not obtained via Seiferts algorithm, and explicitly determine when it is a minimal genus surface and when it is a fibred surface. In the last section they analyze tunnel number one Montesinos knots which have been completely classified by \textit{K. Morimoto}, \textit{M. Sakuma} and \textit{Y. Yokota} [J. Math. Soc. Japan 48, 667--688 (1996; Zbl 0869.57008)] and \textit{E. Klimenko} and \textit{M. Sakuma} [Geom. Dedicata 72, 247--282 (1998; Zbl 0928.20040)]. Using this classification and the previous results, they discuss the relationship between the fibredness of a knot and its Alexander polynomial, proving that, in almost all the cases, a tunnel number one Montesinos knot is fibred if its Alexander polynomial \(\Delta_K(t)\) is ``monic'', i.e. \(\Delta_K(0)=1\).