Solution

ID: past-exam-of-the-mathematics-course-of-the-university-of-cambridge/2014/iii/paper-14/5/4/solution

Orient the two components coherently through the twist region and assign meridian variables . The link diagram is the torus link . It is obtained from the three-component torus link of part 2 by rational Dehn surgery on the third component: removing its meridional disk adds full twists to the original single full twist. For , this just means meridionally deleting the third component.
Write for the removed component's meridian. Its longitude is homologous to , so the filling imposes . Under this substitution, the polynomial of part 2 becomes . The filling core is homologous, up to sign, to . The Turaev-torsion Dehn-filling formula therefore removes the factor , giving
For positive this is the Laurent polynomial . For it is one, as for a Hopf link; for it is zero, as for the two-component unlink. For negative the displayed quotient is still a Laurent polynomial and agrees with the mirrored positive-twist answer up to a unit. These checks also fix the twist count: the exponent is , rather than .

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