Volumes for twist link cone-manifolds (Q2493402)

The authors study certain hyperbolic cone manifolds \(W_p(\alpha,\beta)\) whose underlying space is the 3-sphere and whose singular set is a two component link \(W_p\) with cone angles \(\alpha\) and \(\beta\). The link \(W_p\) is a 2-bridge link and is obtained by adding half-twists to the Whitehead link. In particular, \(W_1\) is the Whitehead link and \(W_2\) is link \(6^2_3\) in the knot table. The authors give an explicit formula for the volume of the cone manifold \(W_2(\alpha,\beta)\). The formula is an application of the Schläfli formula using certain relations between complex lengths of the two singular components and the cone angles. Such a volume formula was previously known for \(W_1(\alpha,\beta)\) [\textit{A. D. Mednykh} and \textit{A. Yu. Vesnin}, Sci. Ser. A Math. Sci. (N.S.) 8, 1--11 (2002; Zbl 1104.57300)]. In this paper, the authors also prove some trigonometric identities for \(W_p(\alpha,\beta)\) in general, which gives some hope to extend the formula to \(p\geq 3\).