Unbounded common surgery slopes among pairs of knots

Let NN be a natural number. Let K(n)K(n) denote the nn-surgery on a knot KK.

Unbounded-slope conjecture. For any natural number NN there exist pairwise-different integers n1,,nNn_1,\ldots,n_N and non-isotopic knots KK and KK' such that, for i=1,,Ni=1,\ldots,N, K(ni)K(n_i) is orientation-preserving diffeomorphic to K(ni)K'(n_i).

This is an equivalent quantified formulation of the claim that there is no bound on the number of slopes for which some pair of knots can have common surgeries. The paper provides examples with four common surgeries, but the arbitrary-NN statement remains open.

Sources & referencesView supporting material

Primary source

Marc Kegel and Lisa Piccirillo, “Knots that share four surgeries”, arXiv:2505.13168 (2025).

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