Epimorphisms between 2–bridge link groups

Abstract

We give a systematic construction of epimorphisms between 2–bridge link groups. Moreover, we show that 2–bridge links having such an epimorphism between their link groups are related by a map between the ambient spaces which only have a certain specific kind of singularity. We show applications of these epimorphisms to the character varieties for 2–bridge links and π1 –dominating maps among