The knot complement conjecture for knots in closed oriented 3-manifolds

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Let YY be a closed oriented 3-manifold, and let K1K_1 and K2K_2 be knots in YY. Their exteriors are the manifolds obtained by deleting open tubular neighborhoods of the knots; they are orientation-preservingly homeomorphic when there is an orientation-preserving homeomorphism between them.

Knot complement conjecture. If K1K_1 and K2K_2 have orientation-preservingly homeomorphic exteriors, then there exists an orientation-preserving homeomorphism of YY mapping K1K_1 to K2K_2.

This is the proposed extension of the Knot Complement Theorem from S3S^3 to arbitrary closed oriented 3-manifolds. The paper notes that it is known in some settings, including certain lens spaces and circle bundles over surfaces, but the general statement remains open.

References

Primary source

Aliakbar Daemi and Tye Lidman, “The knot complement problem for null-homotopic knots”, arXiv:2511.05472 (2025).

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