UPPER BOUNDS IN THE OHTSUKI–RILEY–SAKUMA PARTIAL ORDER ON 2-BRIDGE KNOTS

Abstract

In this paper we use continued fractions to study a partial order on the set of 2-bridge knots derived from the work of Ohtsuki, Riley, and Sakuma. We establish necessary and sufficient conditions for any set of 2-bridge knots to have an upper bound with respect to the partial order. Moreover, given any 2-bridge knot K1 we characterize all other 2-bridge knots K2 such that {K1, K2} has an upper bound. As an application we answer a question of Suzuki, showing that there is no upper bound for the set consisting of the trefoil and figure-eight knots.