Networking Seifert Surgeries on Knots IV: Seiferters and branched coverings

Abstract

A Seifert surgery is an integral surgery on a knot in S^3 producing a Seifert fiber space which may contain an exceptional fiber of index 0. The Seifert Surgery Network is a 1-dimensional complex whose vertices correspond to Seifert surgeries; its edges correspond to single twistings along "seiferters" or "annular pairs of seiferters". One problem of the network is whether there is a path from each vertex to a vertex on a torus knot, the most basic Seifert surgery. We give a method to find seiferters and annular pairs of seiferters for Seifert surgeries obtained by taking two--fold branched covers of tangles. Concerning three infinite families of Seifert surgeries obtained by the second author via branched covers, we find explicit paths in the network from such surgeries to Seifert surgeries on torus knots.