Degeneration of hyperbolic structures on the figure-eight knot complement and points of finite order on an elliptic curve (Q818031)

It is well known that the complement \(S^3 \setminus K\) of the figure-eight knot \(K\) admits a complete, finite volume hyperbolic structure which is unique. Non-complete hyperbolic structures on \(S^3 \setminus K\) are parametrized by points in an open subset \(U\) of a complex affine curve \(C = \{ (z,w) \in \mathbb C^2 | z (z-1) w (w-1) = 1 \}\) over \(\mathbb Q\). In the present paper the author gives an explicit form of a birational map from \(C\) to a non-singular plane cubic curve in Weierstrass form \(E \, : \, y^2 + xy + y = x^3 + x^2 \). The curve \(E\) is a example of what is called an ``elliptic curve defined over \(\mathbb Q\)'', and so, it is an abelian group under an addition law. The author shows the concrete correspondence between the closed 3-manifolds obtained by Dehn fillings on \(S^3 \setminus K\) and some points of finite order on the elliptic curve \(E\). In particular, the Haken manifolds correspond exactly to the rational points of \(E\), which form a cyclic group of order four.