Volumes of highly twisted knots and links (Q873936)

\textit{M. Lackenby} [Proc. Lond. Math. Soc., III. Ser. 88, No. 1, 204--224 (2004; Zbl 1041.57002)] showed that for a hyperbolic alternating knot or link, the volume of its complement is bounded above and below by using the number \(t(D)\) of twist regions in a diagram \(D\). The lower bound is \(v_3(t(D)-2)\), where \(v_3\;(\approx 1.01494\dots)\) is the volume of a regular hyperbolic ideal tetrahedron. Recently, this was improved to \(v_8(t(D)/2-1)\) by \textit{I. Agol, P. A. Storm, W. P. Thurston} and \textit{N. Dunfield} [J. Am. Math. Soc. 20, No. 4, 1053--1077 (2007; Zbl 1155.58016)], where \(v_8\;(\approx 3.66\dots)\) is the volume of a regular hyperbolic octahedron. On the other hand, the upper bound given by Lackenby is valid for all knots. In the appendix of the same paper, the upper bound was improved to \(10v_3(t(D)-1)\) by Ian Agol and Dylan Thurston. The main result of the paper under review similarly approaches the volume of the complement of a hyperbolic knot or link from a diagram. It does not require that the knot or link is alternating as above, but the diagram must contain a large number of twists in each twist region. More precisely, let \(K\) be a knot or link in the \(3\)-sphere. Let \(D\) be a prime and twist reduced diagram of \(K\). If \(D\) contains \(t(D)\geq 2\) twist regions, and each region contains at least \(113\) crossings, then \(K\) is hyperbolic and the volume of \(S^3-K\) is bounded below by \(3.3515\) times \(t(D)\). The argument is geometric. For a given knot or link \(K\), a hyperbolic link \(L\), called the augumented link, is constructed by adding unknotted circles to each twist region, as in Lackenby's paper. Using a decomposition of \(S^3-L\) into ideal polyhedra, a lower bound of the volume of \(S^3-L\) is given, and then hyperbolic Dehn filling is performed to get back to \(S^3-K\). The volume change through Dehn filling is estimated by \textit{C. D. Hodgson} and \textit{S. P. Kerckhoff} [Ann. Math. (2) 162, No. 1, 367--421 (2005; Zbl 1087.57011)].