Networking Seifert surgeries on knots. IV: Seiferters and branched coverings (Q2867794)

A Seifert surgery on a knot in \(\mathbf S^3\) is an integral surgery yielding a Seifert fibered space which may contain an exceptional fiber of index 0. A seiferter for a Seifert surgery on a knot is an unknotted simple closed curve in \(\mathbf S^3\) lying in the complement of the knot which becomes a fiber of some Seifert fibration in the resulting Seifert fibered surgery manifold. Two seiferters are an annular pair if they are both fibers of some Seifert fibration of the surgery manifold and they co-bound an annulus in \(\mathbf S^3\).NEWLINENEWLINEThe Seifert Surgery Network is a 1-dimensional complex whose vertices consists of Seifert surgeries, and two vertices are connected by an edge if one is obtained from the other by a single twist along a seiferter or an annular pair of seiferters.NEWLINENEWLINEIt was shown in an earlier work of the first, the third, and the fourth author that if the surgery manifold of a Seifert surgery admits a fiber of index 0, then it is either a lens space or a connected sum of two lens spaces. A very basic Seifert surgery is one on a nontrivial torus knot by Moser's results.NEWLINENEWLINEIn this paper the authors ask the question of whether there is a path in the Network from any vertex to a vertex on a torus knot. Employing a construction of Seifert fibered spaces by taking 2-fold branched covers of tangles -- the Montesinos trick -- the authors give a method of finding seiferters and annular pairs of seiferters for Seifert surgeries. From the infinite families of Seifert surgeries obtained by the second author using branched covers, the authors find explicit paths in the Network from such surgeries to the Seifert surgeries on torus knots.NEWLINENEWLINEFor the entire collection see [Zbl 1272.57002].