Infinite families of hyperbolic 3‐manifolds with finite‐dimensional skein modules

Abstract

The Kauffman bracket skein module $K(M)$ of a $3$-manifold $M$ is the quotient of the $\mathbb{Q}(A)$-vector space spanned by isotopy classes of links in $M$ by the Kauffman relations. A conjecture of Witten states that if $M$ is closed then $K(M)$ is finite dimensional. We introduce a version of this conjecture for manifolds with boundary and prove a stability property for generic Dehn-filling of knots. As a result we provide the first hyperbolic examples of the conjecture, proving that almost all Dehn-fillings of any two-bridge knot satisfies the conjecture.