PERSISTENTLY LAMINAR TANGLES

We show how to build tangles T in a 3-ball with the property that any knot obtained by tangle sum with T has a persistent lamination in its exterior, and therefore has property P. The construction is based on an example of a persistent lamination in the exterior of the twist knot 6₁, due to Ulrich Oertel. We also show how the construction can be generalized to n-string tangles.