Totally geodesic boundaries of knot complements (Q5313359)

Let \(\Sigma\) be a closed surface of negative Euler characteristic and let \(\mathcal{H}\) be the set of all orientable 3-manifolds admitting a complete finite volume hyperbolic structure with totally geodesic boundary homeomorphic to \(\Sigma\). There is a map \(\hat\partial\) from \(\mathcal{H}\) to the moduli space of \(\Sigma\). By a theorem of Fujii and Soma the image of \(\hat\partial\) is dense. Let \(M\) be a compact orientable 3-manifold whose boundary is homeomorphic to \(\Sigma\) and let \(\mathcal{K}_{M}\) be the set of all complements of knots in \(M\) that lie in \(\mathcal{H}\). Again there is a map \(\partial\) from \(\mathcal{K}_{M}\) to the Teichmüller space of \(\Sigma\). The author studies the image of \(\partial\) and proves the following theorem: \textbf{Theorem.} Let \(C\subset\Sigma=\partial M\) be a simple closed curve and let \(\epsilon>0\). Then every knot in \(M\) is homotopic to a knot \(K\) such that \(M\setminus K\) is finite-volume hyperbolic, \(\Sigma\) is totally geodesic, and \(C\) is isotopic in \(\Sigma\) to a geodesic of length less than \(\epsilon\).