Augmented cellular alternating links in thickened surfaces are hyperbolic (Q6076279)

By a fundamental result of \textit{W. Menasco} [Topology 23, 37--44 (1984; Zbl 0525.57003)], a link in the 3-sphere with a reduced alternating projection is hyperbolic (excluding 2-braid link projections). This was generalized for \textit{augmented alternating links}, i.e. alternating links augmented by trivial components bounding twice-punctured disks in the complement, and also for links in a thickened surface \(S \times I\) (motivated also by the fact that virtual links can be realized as real links in a thickened surface). The main result of the present paper states that augmented alternating links \(L\) in \(I\)-bundles over closed, orientable or non-orientable surfaces \(S\) are again hyperbolic (excluding the cases where \(S\) is a sphere or projective plane and \(L\) a 2-braid link, plus one more case). Moreover, the augmented alternating links in \(S \times I\) form a closed subset of finite-volume hyperbolic 3-manifolds in the geometric topology, generalizing a result of \textit{M. Lackenby} for the case of the 3-sphere [Proc. Lond. Math. Soc. (3) 88, No. 1, 204--224 (2004; Zbl 1041.57002)].