Dihedral coverings of Montesinos knots (Q2493420)

Let us focus our attention on branched coverings \(\varphi:S^3\to (S^3,k)\) where the knot \(k\) is the branching of \(\varphi\). The authors consider the question to classify the knots \(k\) for which one can get a Dihedral covering \(\varphi\), i.e. the representation determined by the covering has the Dihedral group as its image. There is a slight variation of this notion called dihedral quotient. The main result of the paper is to determine the family of Montesinos knots \(k\), in terms of their invariants, which admit a dihedral quotient \(S^3\to (S^3,k)\). This is used to study the Universal link problem. A link \(k\subset S^3\) is called Universal if each closed, connected, orientable 3-manifold is a branched covering over \((S^3,k)\). There are links which are Universal [see \textit{Thurston}, Universal links, preprint (1982)]. Further results about Universal links which are closely related to the paper under review were obtained by \textit{H. M. Hilden, M. T. Lozano} and \textit{J. M. Montesinos} [Topology 24, 499--504 (1985; Zbl 0582.57002)] where they showed that all hyperbolic 2-bridge links are universal, and by \textit{Y. Uchida} [Knots 90, Proc. Int. Conf. Knot Theory Rel. Topics, Osaka/Japan 1990, 241--270 (1992; Zbl 0778.57009)] where he classified all Uchida links with respect to the Universal property. Given a knot \(k\), the strategy used in the paper to show that \(k\) is universal consists in constructing a branched covering \(\varphi:S^3\to (S^3,k)\) such that it contains a universal link in the preimage of \(k\). This hard analysis uses the authors' main result. This together with the results of the two refences above, provides a list of Montesinos knots which are universal.