Fe b 20 09 GEOMETRIC LIMITS OF KNOT COMPLEMENTS

We prove that any complete hyperbolic 3–manifold with finitely generated fundamental group, with a single topological end, and which embeds into S is the geometric limit of a sequence of hyperbolic knot complements in S. In particular, we derive the existence of hyperbolic knot complements which contain balls of arbitrarily large radius. We also show that a complete hyperbolic 3–manifold with two convex cocompact ends cannot be a geometric limit of knot complements in S.