Minimality conjecture for 2-bridge knots with four boundary slopes

Let KK be a 2-bridge knot, and suppose that its boundary-slope set has exactly four distinct elements. A 2-bridge knot K1K_1 is minimal with respect to the Silver–Whitten partial ordering if K1K2K_1\geq K_2 implies that K1K_1 and K2K_2 represent the same knot in the ordering. Four-slope minimality conjecture. A 2-bridge knot with exactly four distinct boundary slopes is minimal with respect to the Silver–Whitten partial ordering. The paper explains that boundary-slope arguments eliminate most cases, but several cases require additional information about Alexander polynomials or character varieties and remain unresolved.

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Primary source

Jim Hoste and Patrick D. Shanahan, “Epimorphisms and Boundary Slopes of 2-Bridge Knots”, arXiv:1002.1106 (2010).

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