Caltech/USC/UCLA Joint Topology Seminar

We say that p/q is a characterizing slope for a knot K in the 3-sphere if the oriented homeomorphism type of p/q-surgery is sufficient to determine the knot K uniquely. I will discuss the problem of determining which slopes are characterizing for torus knots, paying particular attention to non-integer slopes. This problem is related to the question of which knots in the 3-sphere have Seifert fibered surgeries.