On medial links and hyperbolic 3-manifolds with large isometry groups (Q2569604)

In this paper the authors study an interesting method of constructing links from planar graphs including the one-skeleta of Platonic solids. The basic idea is to construct a new graph having one vertex at the center of each original edge and one edge for each original corner. The resulting graph is called the medial graph and it may be regarded as the projection of an alternating link. Such a link is called a medial link. It follows that the symmetries of the original graph lift to symmetries of the resulting medial link. The quotients of the links arising from the tetrahedron or octahedron are cusped hyperbolic orbifolds which turn out to be equivalent to the quotient of hyperbolic space by \(\mathrm{PGL}_2({\mathcal O}_d)\) for \(d=1, 2\), respectively. Here \({\mathcal O}_d\) represents the ring of integers in the field \({\mathbb Q}(\sqrt{-d})\). The main theorem proved in this paper is that the manifolds obtained from the medial octahedral link by equivariant surgery are regular covers of a corresponding surgery on the quotient orbifold. The proof of the theorem is an enjoyable sequence of small quotients followed by isotopies. Because of the large symmetry of a Platonic solid it is not surprising that the quotient orbifolds of the Platonic medial links have small volume. In addition one is not surprised to find that manifolds obtained from equivariant surgery on medial Platonic links are maximally symmetric in some sense. This paper contains a number of interesting remarks about these small volume orbifolds and a couple of interesting propositions formalizing the notion that these manifolds are maximally symmetric.