Strongly-cyclic branched coverings of knots via \((g,1)\)-decompositions (Q2460676)

For any knot \(K\) in a closed orientable 3-manifold \(M\), there exists a genus \(g\) Heegaard decomposition of \(M\), for a certain \(g \geq h(M)\) (the Heegaard genus of \(M\)), such that \(K\) meets both the handlebodies in trivial arcs. This is called a \((g,1)\)-decomposition \(K\). A cyclic branched covering branched over \(K\) is called strongly-cyclic if the preimage of any point of \(K\) consists of a single point. In this paper strongly-cyclic branched coverings of knots are studied by using their \((g,1)\)-decompositions. Necessary and sufficient conditions for the existence and uniqueness of such coverings are obtained. It is also shown that their fundamental groups admit geometric \(g\)-words cyclic presentations. As an application, it is shown that generalized periodic Takahashi manifolds are strongly-cyclic branched coverings of certain knots in a connected sum of lens spaces.