The realization problem for noninteger Seifert fibered surgeries (Q6164260)

Any closed, orientable 3-manifold can be obtained from \(S^3\) by Dehn surgery along a (multi-component) link. This paper relates to the question of what happens if this is restricted to (single-component) knots. Specifically, it considers a small Seifert fibred manifold \(Y\) created by positive, non-integer Dehn surgery on a knot \(K\) in \(S^3\). An invariant \(e(Y)\) can be defined in different ways, one of which is in terms of a manifold that has \(Y\) as its boundary. The main result of this paper is that, for most values of \(e(Y)\), if \(Y\) is a Seifert fibred space over \(S^2\) with three exceptional fibres, then \(K\) can be replaced by another knot \(K'\) that is either a torus knot or a cable of a torus knot. The authors also identify which such knots and coefficients yield a manifold meeting these conditions. For \(e(Y)\geq 3\), the proof draws on a number of known results and methods in \(3\)-manifold topology. The authors write: ``The main technical content of this paper comes in the analysis of the \(e(Y)=2\) case. The key point is that the definite plumbing bounding a Seifert fibered space is an example of a `sharp' manifold [\ldots]. This allows us to apply the changemaker lattice surgery obstruction [\ldots]. Almost all previous applications of changemaker lattices have involved studying situations in which changemaker lattices are isomorphic to graph lattices [\ldots]. The majority of the technical innovation in this paper comes from circumventing the fact that we are not dealing with a graph lattice.''