Metabelian representations, twisted Alexander polynomials, knot slicing, and mutation (Q611990)

Given a knot complement \(X\) and its \(p\)-fold cyclic covering \(X_p \to X\), the authors identify the twisted Alexander polynomials associated to \(\text{GL}_1(\mathbb F[t^{\pm1}])\)-representations of \(\pi_1(X_p)\) with the twisted Alexander polynomials associated to the related \(\text{GL}_p(\mathbb F[t^{\pm1}])\)-representations of \(\pi_1(X)\) which factor through metabelian representations. The basic tool of the homological algebra that is needed for the above identification is Shapiro's Lemma, which is applied to show that \(H_1(X_p;\mathbb F[t^{\pm 1}])\) is isomorphic to \(H_1(X;(\mathbb F[t^{\pm} 1])^p)\) as left \(\mathbb F[t^{\pm} 1]\)-modules, that \(H_1(X_p;\mathbb Q[\xi_q])\) is isomorphic to \(H_1(X;(\mathbb Q[\xi_q])^p)\) as left \(\mathbb Q[\xi_q]\)-modules, where \(\xi_q\) is a primitive \(q\)th root of unity, and that \(H_1(X_p;\mathbb Q[\xi_q][t^{\pm 1}])\) is isomorphic to \(H_1(X;(\mathbb Q[\xi_q][t^{\pm 1}])^p)\) as left \(\mathbb Q[\xi_q][t^{\pm 1}]\)-modules, hence the twisted Alexander polynomials associated with the two homology groups are equal. As applications, the identification provides an algorithm which vastly simplifies the computation of twisted Alexander polynomials, and provides a method for proving that 16 (out of 18 previously known) algebraically slice knots of 12 or fewer crossings are not slice. The algorithm is also used to show that the 24 mutants of the Pretzel knot \(P(3,7,9,11,15)\), corresponding to permutations of \((7,9,11,15)\), represent distinct concordance classes.