Heegaard splittings of knot exteriors

Yoav Moriah

Published 2006-08-05, updated 2009-03-31Version 4

The goal of this paper is to offer a comprehensive exposition of the current knowledge about Heegaard splittings of exteriors of knots in the 3-sphere. The exposition is done with a historical perspective as to how ideas developed and by whom. Several new notions are introduced and some facts about them are proved. In particular the concept of a 1/n-primitive meridian. It is then proved that if a knot K in S^3 has a 1/n-primitive meridian; then nK = K#...#K, n-times has a Heegaard splitting of genus nt(K) + n which has a 1-primitive meridian. That is, nK is mu-primitive.