We compute Cayley graphs and automorphism groups for all finite $n$-quandles of two-bridge and torus knots and links, as well as torus links with an axis.
To better understand the fundamental quandle of a knot or link, it can be useful to look at finite quotients of the quandle. One such quotient is the $n$-quandle (or, when $n=2$, the {em involutory} quandle). Hoste and Shanahan cite{HS2} gave a compl
ete list of the links which have finite $n$-quandles; it remained to give explicit descriptions of these quandles. This has been done for several cases in cite{CHMS} and cite{HS1}; in the current work we continue this project and explicitly describe the Cayley graphs for the finite involutory quandles of two-bridge links with an axis.
The fundamental quandle is a powerful invariant of knots and links, but it is difficult to describe in detail. It is often useful to look at quotients of the quandle, especially finite quotients. One natural quotient introduced by Joyce is the $n$-qu
andle. Hoste and Shanahan gave a complete list of the knots and links which have finite $n$-quandles for some $n$. We introduce a generalization of $n$-quandles, denoted $N$-quandles (for a quandle with $k$ algebraic components, $N$ is a $k$-tuple of positive integers). We conjecture a classification of the links with finite $N$-quandles for some $N$, and we prove one direction of the classification.
We give necessary conditions for a polynomial to be the Conway polynomial of a two-bridge link. As a consequence, we obtain simple proofs of the classical theorems of Murasugi and Hartley. We give a modulo 2 congruence for links, which implies the cl
assical modulo 2 Murasugi congruence for knots. We also give sharp bounds for the coefficients of the Conway and Alexander polynomials of a two-bridge link. These bounds improve and generalize those of Nakanishi and Suketa.
Residual torsion-free nilpotence has proven to be an important property for knot groups with applications to bi-orderability and ribbon concordance. Mayland proposed a strategy to show that a two-bridge knot group has a commutator subgroup which is a
union of an ascending chain of parafree groups. This paper proves Maylands assertion and expands the result to the subgroups of two-bridge link groups that correspond to the kernels of maps to $mathbb{Z}$. We call these kernels the Alexander subgroups of the links. As a result, we show the bi-orderability of a large family of two-bridge link groups. This proof makes use of a modified version of a graph theoretic construction of Hirasawa and Murasugi in order to understand the structure of the Alexander subgroup for a two-bridge link group.
In this paper we give an explicit formula for the twisted Alexander polynomial of any torus link and show that it is a locally constant function on the $SL(2, mathbb C)$-character variety. We also discuss similar things for the higher dimensional twi
sted Alexander polynomial and the Reidemeister torsion.