Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2018 iii Paper 141 1 a Solution Created 2026-10-03 Updated 2026-10-05
Use the meridian of a knot and Seifert longitude of the unknot on its boundary torus. The unknot's knot exterior is a solid torus whose disk-bounding curve is . A genus-one Heegaard diagram is thereforeHere the horizontal coordinate is and the vertical coordinate is . The drawing uses a small translate of to avoid intersections on the edge of the square; opposite edges are identified. The algebraic intersection number of curves on an oriented surface has absolute value five.
Starting with , attach a three-dimensional two-handle along , using its surface framing, and cap the resulting sphere with a three-handle. This gives the solid torus on that side. Attach a two-handle along , again using the surface framing, and cap its sphere with a three-handle. The second solid torus has its disk-bounding curve identified with , so the resulting oriented lens space is precisely the specified Dehn filling.
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2018 iii Paper 141 1 b Solution Created 2026-10-03 Updated 2026-10-05
The solid torus supplied by the side has fundamental group generated by the image of , while is trivial. The two-handle imposes . The three-handles do not change the fundamental group, so
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2018 iii Paper 141 3 a Solution Created 2026-10-03 Updated 2026-10-05
Label the four crossings in top, left-middle, right-middle, bottom order. Label the bounded regions (left), (right), (upper middle), (central bigon), (lower middle), and the unbounded region . The drawing preserves the crossings and the orientation of the supplied figure-eight knot diagram. Its overpassing strands are the outer-left/upper-right strand at , the upper-left/lower-central strand at , the upper-central/lower-right strand at , and the lower-left/outer-right strand at .
Here is the Dehn presentation Heegaard diagram specified by this drawing. Replace the underlying four-valent planar graph by a small three-dimensional regular neighborhood and put . Since has four vertices and eight edges, has genus . On , take the five curves bordering the bounded faces, pushed slightly onto the boundary of . They bound a complete disk system in the complementary handlebody ; their labels are .
The four curves bound the disks dual to the four short crossing tunnels in . Lift the crossing circles shown in red onto the upper and lower sheets of , routing them along the corresponding face boundaries; the crossing's overpassing strand determines the lift. Orient the disk normals and the curves so that their signed successive intersections with the curves areAt the missing fourth corner is the unbounded region , whose generator is omitted. This sheet-lifting prescription, together with the projected graph, specifies the curves on the Heegaard surface; the red circles alone are only their local projections.
To recover the knot exterior from , attach five two-handles along the curves on one side and cap the resulting sphere with a three-handle. On the other side attach four two-handles along the curves. Compressing that side leaves the boundary torus of the knot exterior, which is retained. In particular, the counts are five compressions and four compressions, rather than two complete genus-five disk systems.

