Menasco–Reid conjecture on totally geodesic surfaces in hyperbolic knot complements

Let S3KS^{3}\setminus K be the complement of a hyperbolic knot KK in S3S^{3}. A closed embedded totally geodesic surface is a closed totally geodesic surface embedded in this hyperbolic 33-manifold. Menasco–Reid conjecture. There does not exist a hyperbolic knot complement in S3S^{3} that contains a closed embedded totally geodesic surface. Counterexamples are now known, although classifying the hyperbolic knots and links that fail to admit such surfaces remains an open and interesting question.

Sources & referencesView supporting material

Primary source

Casandra D. Monroe, “Branched Bending in Finite-Volume Hyperbolic Manifolds”, arXiv:2604.22004 (2026).

Additional references

5 papers in this index state this conjecture (2004–2026). The statement above is taken from the most recent of them; the others are arXiv:2403.12397, arXiv:1802.04619, arXiv:math/0601561, arXiv:math/0409455.

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