The 27 possible intrinsic symmetry groups of two-component links

Abstract

We consider the "intrinsic" symmetry group of a two-component link $L$, defined to be the image $\Sigma(L)$ of the natural homomorphism from the standard symmetry group $\MCG(S^3,L)$ to the product $\MCG(S^3) \cross \MCG(L)$. This group, first defined by Whitten in 1969, records directly whether $L$ is isotopic to a link $L'$ obtained from $L$ by permuting components or reversing orientations; it is a subgroup of $\Gamma_2$, the group of all such operations. For two-component links, we catalog the 27 possible intrinsic symmetry groups, which represent the subgroups of $\Gamma_2$ up to conjugacy. We are able to provide prime, nonsplit examples for 21 of these groups; some are classically known, some are new. We catalog the frequency at which each group appears among all 77,036 of the hyperbolic two-component links of 14 or fewer crossings in Thistlethwaite's table. We also provide some new information about symmetry groups of the 293 non-hyperbolic two-component links of 14 or fewer crossings in the table.