Simon's conjecture for two-bridge knots (Q614510)

Simon's Conjecture asserts that the group of a non trivial knot in \(S^3\) surjects onto only finitely many distinct knot groups. This conjecture is easily seen to hold for torus knots and, in this paper, the authors prove it for a class of small knots that includes two-bridge knots. The character variety is the main algebraic tool that organizes the proofs of the results in this paper. In particular, the authors make use of a result of \textit{P. B. Kronheimer} and \textit{T. S. Mrowka} [Math. Res. Lett. 11, 741--754 (2004; Zbl 1084.57006)] which ensures that the \(SL_2(\mathbb{C})\)-character variety of any non-trivial knot contains a curve of characters of irreducible representations.