SURGERY AND FOLIATIONS OF KNOT COMPLEMENTS

Abstract

An interesting class of knots have complement with a remarkably simple topological description. This class includes all the arborescent knots with only even weights hence, in particular, the two bridge knots and many knots of ten or fewer crossings. For these knots, there are choices of minimal genus Seifert surfaces S such that all taut, depth one foliations of the knot complement, having S as sole compact leaf, can be classified up to isotopy. These foliations correspond exactly to the lattice points over the open faces of the unit ball in a Thurston-like norm on the relative homology of the complement of S.