Virtual Knot Groups

Abstract

Virtual knots, defined by Kauffman, provide a natural generalization of classical knots. Most invariants of knots extend in a natural way to give invariants of virtual knots. In this paper we study the fundamental groups of virtual knots and observe several new and unexpected phenomena. In the classical setting, if the longitude of a knot is trivial in the knot group then the group is infinite cyclic. We show that for any classical knot group there is a virtual knot with that group and trivial longitude. It is well known that the second homology of a classical knot group is trivial. We provide counterexamples of this for virtual knots. For an arbitrary group G, we give necessary and sufficient conditions for the existence of a virtual knot group that maps onto G with specified behavior on the peripheral subgroup. These conditions simplify those that arise in the classical setting.