Classification of 3-bridge spheres of 3-bridge arborescent links

Abstract

In this paper, we give an isotopy classification of 3-bridge spheres of 3-bridge arborescent links, which are not Montesinos links. To this end, we prove a certain refinement of a theorem of J. S. Birman and H. M. Hilden [3] on the relation between bridge presentations of links and Heegaard splittings of 3-manifolds. In the proof of this result, we also give an answer to a question by K. Morimoto [23] on the classification of genus-2 Heegaard splittings of certain graph manifolds.