Geometric presentations of classical knot groups

The question addressed by thls paper is, how close is the tunnel number of a knot to the minimum number of relators in a presentation of the knot group? A dubious, but useful conjecture, is that these two invariants are equal. (The analogous assertion applied to 3-manifolds is known to be false. [1]...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: John Erbland, Mauricio Guterriez
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: Wiley 1991-01-01
Series:International Journal of Mathematics and Mathematical Sciences
Online Access:http://dx.doi.org/10.1155/S0161171291000339
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Summary:The question addressed by thls paper is, how close is the tunnel number of a knot to the minimum number of relators in a presentation of the knot group? A dubious, but useful conjecture, is that these two invariants are equal. (The analogous assertion applied to 3-manifolds is known to be false. [1]). It has been shown recently [2] that not all presentations of a knot group are geometric. The main result in this paper asserts that the tunnel number is equal to the minimum number of relators among presentations satisfying a somewhat restrictive condition, that is, that such presentations are always geometric.
ISSN:0161-1712
1687-0425