Surgery untying of coloured knots (Q2492047)

A \(p\)-coloring of a knot \(K\) is a surjective homomorphism \(\rho\) from the knot group to the dihedral group \(D_{2p}\), where \(p\) is an odd integer. The pair \((K,\rho)\) is called a \(p\)-colored knot. \(\rho\) can be encoded as a coloring of arcs in a knot diagram by elements of \(Z_{p}\) such that at least two colors are used and at each crossing half the sum of the labels of the underpasses equals the label of the overpass modulo \(p\). The concept of untying a \(p\)-colored knot by \(\pm 1\)-framed surgeries along unknots is discussed using only surgeries that preserve a \(p\)-coloring \(\rho\) of \(K\), that is by surgeries along unknots in the kernel of a \(p\)-coloring. For \(p=3\) and for \(p=5\) it is shown that there are exactly \(p\) equivalence classes of \(p\)-colored knots modulo \(\pm 1\)-framed surgeries along unknots in the kernel of a \(p\)-coloring. These equivalence classes are represented by connected sum of \(n\) left-hand \((p,2)\)-torus knots with a given coloring when \(n=1,2,\ldots,p\). The author conjectures that this is true for any odd prime \(p\).