In this paper, we give a parameterization of the SU(2,1) representation space of the Brieskorn homology spheres using the trace coordinates. As applications, we give an example which shows that the orbifold Toledo invariant in \cite{krebs} does not distinguish the connected components of the PU(2,1) representation space.
Fintushel and Stern showed that the Brieskorn sphere $Σ(2,3,7)$ bounds a rational homology ball, while its non-trivial Rokhlin invariant obstructs it from bounding an integral homology ball. It is known that their argument can be modified to show that the figure-eight knot is rationally slice, and we use this fact to provide the first additional examples of Brieskorn spheres that bound rational homology balls but not integral homology balls: the families $Σ(2,4n+1,12n+5)$ and $Σ(3,3n+1,12n+5)$ for $n$ odd. We also provide handlebody diagrams for a rational homology ball containing a rationally…
We call an integral homology sphere $\textit{non-trivially}$ bounds a rational homology ball if it is obstructed from bounding an integral homology ball. After Fintushel and Stern's well-known example $Σ(2,3,7)$, Akbulut and Larson recently provided the first infinite families of Brieskorn spheres non-trivially bounding rational homology balls: $Σ(2,4n+1,12n+5)$ and $Σ(3,3n+1,12n+5)$ for odd~$n$. Using their technique, we present new such families: $Σ(2,4n+3,12n+7)$ and $Σ(3,3n+2,12n+7)$ for even $n$. Also manipulating their main argument, we simply recover some classical results of Akbulut an…
Ozsváth and Szabó gave a combinatorial description for the Heegaard Floer homology of boundaries of certain negative-definite plumbings. Némethi constructed a remarkable algorithm for executing these computations for almost-rational plumbings, and his work gives a formula computing the invariants for the Brieskorn homology spheres -Σ (p,q,pqn + 1). Here we give a formula for HF^{+}(-Σ(p,q,pqn-1)), generalizing the one for the n=1 case given by Borodzik and Némethi. We also compute HF^{+} for the families -Σ(2,5,k) and -Σ(2,7,k).
We classify SL(2;C)-representations of a Brieskorn homology 3-sphere. We show any irreducible representation into SL(2;C) is conjugate to that into either SU(2) or SL(2;R). We also give a construction of SL(2;R)-representations for a Brieskorn homology 3-sphere from PSL(2;R)-representations of the base orbifold fundamental group.
Cylindrical contact homology is a comparatively simple incarnation of symplectic field theory whose existence and invariance under suitable hypotheses was recently established by Hutchings and Nelson. We study this invariant for a general Brieskorn 3-manifold $Σ(a_1,\ldots, a_n)$, and give a complete description of the cylindrical contact homology for this 3-manifold equipped with its natural contact structure, for any $a_j$ satisfying $\frac{1}{a_1} + \cdots + \frac{1}{a_n} < n-2$.
Continuing our previous work, we effectively compute connected Heegaard Floer homologies of two families of Brieskorn spheres realized as the boundaries of almost simple linear graphs. Using Floer theoretic invariants of Dai, Hom, Stoffregen, and Truong, we show that these Brieskorn spheres also generate infinite rank summands in the homology cobordism group. Our computations also have applications to the concordance of classical knots and $0$-concordance of $2$-knots.
We show that standard cyclic actions on Brieskorn homology 3-spheres with non-empty fixed set do not extend smoothly to any contractible smooth 4-manifold it may bound. The quotient of any such extension would be an acyclic $4$-manifold with boundary a related Brieskorn homology sphere. We briefly discuss well known invariants of homology spheres that obstruct acyclic bounding 4-manifolds, and then use a method based on equivariant Yang-Mills moduli spaces to rule out extensions of the actions.
We perform a resurgence analysis of the $SU(2)$ Chern-Simons partition function on a Brieksorn homology sphere $Σ(2,5,7)$. Starting from an exact Chern-Simons partition function, we study the Borel resummation of its perturbative expansion.
It is known by the author that there exist 20 families of Dehn surgeries in the Poincaré homology sphere yielding lens spaces. In this paper, we give the concrete knot diagrams of the families and extend them to families of lens space surgeries in Brieskorn homology spheres. We illustrate families of lens space surgeries in $Σ(2,3,6n\pm1)$ and $Σ(2,2s+1,2(2s+1)n\pm1)$ and so on. As other examples, we give lens space surgeries in graph homology spheres, which are obtained by splicing two Brieskorn homology spheres.
A conjecture due to Gompf asserts that no nontrivial Brieskorn homology sphere admits a pseudoconvex embedding in ${\mathbb C}^2$, with either orientation. A related question asks whether every compact contractible 4-manifold admits the structure of a Stein domain. We verify Gompf's conjecture, with one orientation, for a family of Brieskorn spheres of which some are known to admit a smooth embedding in ${\mathbb C}^2$. With the other orientation our methods do not resolve the question, but do give rise to an example of a contractible, boundary-irreducible 4-manifold that admits no Stein struc…
In this survey, we give an overview of Brieskorn manifolds and varieties, and their role in contact topology. We discuss open books, fillings and invariants such as contact and symplectic homology. We also present some new results involving exotic contact structures, invariants and orderability. The main tool for the required computations is a version of the Morse-Bott spectral sequence. We provide a proof for the particular version that is useful for us.
We define invariants $\frak{ds}$ and $\overline{\frak{ds}}$, which are the maximal and minimal second Betti number divided by $8$ among definite spin boundings of a homology sphere. The similar invariants $g_8$ and $\overline{g_8}$ are defined by the maximal (or minimal) product sum of $E_8$-form of bounding 4-manifolds. We compute these invariants for some homology spheres. We construct $E_8$-boundings for some of Brieskorn 3-spheres $Σ(2,3,12n+5)$ by handle decomposition. As a by-product of the construction, some negative classes which consist of addition of several fiber classes plus one se…
The Brieskorn manifolds $B(p,q,r)$ are the $r$-fold cyclic coverings of the 3-sphere $S^{3}$ branched over the torus knot $T(p,q)$. The generalised Sieradski groups $S(m,p,q)$ are groups with $m$-cyclic pre\-sen\-tation $G_{m}(w)$, where defining word $w$ has a special form, depending of $p$ and $q$. In particular, $S(m,3,2) = G_{m}(w)$ is the group with $m$ generators $x_{1}, \ldots, x_{m}$ and $m$ defining relations $w(x_{i}, x_{i+1}, x_{i+2})=1$, where $w(x_{i}, x_{i+1}, x_{i+2}) = x_{i} x_{i+2} x_{i+1}^{-1}$. Presentations of $S(2n,3,2)$ in a certain form $G_{n}(w)$ were investigated by Ho…
There are known infinite families of Brieskorn homology 3-spheres which can be realized as boundaries of smooth contractible 4-manifolds. In this paper we show that free periodic actions on these Brieskorn spheres do not extend smoothly over a contractible 4-manifold. We give a new infinite family of examples in which the actions extend locally linearly but not smoothly.
We prove a basic inequality for the d-invariants of a splice of knots in homology spheres. As a result, we are able to prove a new relation on the rank of reduced Floer homology under maps between Seifert fibered homology spheres, improving results of the first and second authors. As a corollary, a degree one map between two aspherical Seifert homology spheres is homotopic to a homeomorphism if and only if the Heegaard Floer homologies are isomorphic.
In this paper we investigate the question of when different surgeries on a knot can produce identical manifolds. We show that given a knot in a homology sphere, unless the knot is quite special, there is a bound on the number of slopes that can produce a fixed manifold that depends only on this fixed manifold and the homology sphere the knot is in. By finding a different bound on the number of slopes, we show that non-null-homologous knots in certain homology $\mathbb{R}P^3$'s are determined by their complements. We also prove the surgery characterisation of the unknot for null-homologous knot…
We show that a graph manifold which is a Z-homology 3-sphere not homeomorphic to either the 3-sphere or the Poincaré homology 3-sphere admits a horizontal foliation. This combines with known results to show that the conditions of not being an L-space, of having a left-orderable fundamental group, and of admitting a co-oriented taut foliation, are equivalent for graph manifold Z-homology 3-spheres.
The cosmetic surgery conjecture is a longstanding conjecture in 3-manifold theory. We present a theorem about exceptional cosmetic surgery for homology spheres. Along the way we prove that if the surgery is not a small seifert $\mathbb{Z}/2\mathbb{Z}$-homology sphere or a toroidal irreducible non-Seifert surgery then there is at most one pair of exceptional truly cosmetic slope. We also prove that toroidal truly cosmetic surgeries on integer homology spheres must be integer homology spheres.
In this short note, we prove that if a knot in the Poincare homology sphere is homotopically essential, then it does not admit any purely cosmetic surgeries.
For the link $M$ of a normal complex surface singularity $(X,0)$ we ask when a knot $K\subset M$ exists for which the answer to whether $K$ is the link of the zero set of some analytic germ $(X,0)\to (\mathbb C,0)$ affects the analytic structure on $(X,0)$. We show that if $M$ is an integral homology sphere then such a knot exists if and only if $M$ is not one of the Brieskorn homology spheres $M(2,3,5)$, $M(2,3,7)$, $M(2,3,11)$.
For each rational homology 3-sphere $Y$ which bounds simply connected definite 4-manifolds of both signs, we construct an infinite family of irreducible rational homology 3-spheres which are homology cobordant to $Y$ but cannot bound any simply connected definite 4-manifold. As a corollary, for any coprime integers $p,q$, we obtain an infinite family of irreducible rational homology 3-spheres which are homology cobordant to the lens space $L(p,q)$ but cannot obtained by a knot surgery.
Hedden defined two knots in each lens space that, through analogies with their knot Floer homology and doubly pointed Heegaard diagrams of genus one, may be viewed as generalizations of the two trefoils in S^3. Rasmussen shows that when the `left-handed' one is in the homology class of the dual to a Berge knot of type VII, it admits an L-space homology sphere surgery. In this note we give a simple proof that these L-space homology spheres are always the Poincaré homology sphere.
We establish three rank inequalities for the reduced flavor of Heegaard Floer homology of Seifert fibered integral homology spheres. Combining these inequalities with the known classifications of non-zero degree maps between Seifert fibered spaces, we prove that a map f from Y' to Y between Seifert homology spheres yields the inequality that |deg f| rank HFred(Y) is at most rank HFred(Y'). These inequalities are also applied in conjunction with an algorithm of Nemethi to give a method to solve the botany problem for the Heegaard Floer homology of these manifolds.
A regular fiber of the Seifert fibering of the Poincaré homology sphere admits a Dehn surgery to $L(2,1)\#L(3,2)\#L(5,4)$. We prove that this is the only knot in the Poincaré homology sphere with a surgery to a connected sum of more than two lens spaces.
We present infinitely many homology spheres which contain two distinct knots whose 0-surgeries are $S^1 \times S^2$. This resolves a question posed by Kirby and Melvin in 1978.
We examine surgery on a knot in $S^3$ to determine surgery obstructions to Seifert fibered integral homology spheres. We find such surgery obstructions using Heegaard Floer, Knot Floer homology and the mapping cone formula for computing Heegaard Floer homology of surgery on a knot. Here however, we take a different approach and use the number of singular fibers of a Seifert fibered integral homology sphere, which is the toroidal structure, to find obstructions. This approach allows us to show that genus one knots cannot yield Seifert fibered integral homology spheres with six or more singular …
This paper gives infinitely many examples of non L-space irreducible integer homology 3-spheres whose fundamental groups do not have nontrivial $\widetilde{PSL_2(\mathbb{R})}$ representations.
It was shown in my earlier article that the splice diagram of a rational homology sphere graph manifold determines the manifolds universal abelian cover. In this article we use the proof of this to give a condition on the splice diagram to determine when the universal abelian cover itself is a rational homology sphere.
We show that the perturbative ${\frak g}$ invariant of rational homology 3-spheres can be recovered from the LMO invariant for any simple Lie algebra ${\frak g}$, i.e, the LMO invariant is universal among the perturbative invariants. This universality was conjectured in [25]. Since the perturbative invariants dominate the quantum invariants of integral homology 3-spheres [13,14,15], this implies that the LMO invariant dominates the quantum invariants of integral homology 3-spheres.
We derive a formula for the $\barμ$-invariant of a Seifert fibered homology sphere in terms of the eta-invariant of its Dirac operator. As a consequence, we obtain a vanishing result for the index of certain Dirac operators on plumbed 4-manifolds bounding such spheres.
Auckly gave two examples of irreducible integer homology spheres (one toroidal and one hyperbolic) which are not surgery on a knot in the three-sphere. Using Heegaard Floer homology, the authors and Karakurt provided infinitely many small Seifert fibered examples. In this note, we extend those results to give infinitely many hyperbolic examples, as well as infinitely many examples with arbitrary JSJ decomposition.
Any knot in $S^3$ may be reduced to a slice knot by crossing changes. Indeed, this slice knot can be taken to be the unknot. In this paper we study the question of when the same holds for knots in homology spheres. We show that a knot in a homology sphere is nullhomotopic in a smooth homology ball if and only if that knot is smoothly concordant to a knot which is homotopic to a smoothly slice knot. As a consequence, we prove that the equivalence relation on knots in homology spheres given by cobounding immersed annuli in a homology cobordism is generated by concordance in homology cobordisms t…
In this paper we construct families of homology spheres which bound 4-manifolds with intersection forms isomorphic to $-E_8$. We show that these families have arbitrary large correction terms. This result says that among homology spheres, the difference of the maximal rank of minimal sub-lattice of definite filling and the maximal rank of even definite filling is arbitrarily large.
In this paper, we study various homology cobordism invariants for Seifert fibered integral homology 3-spheres derived from Heegaard Floer homology. Our main tool is lattice homology, a combinatorial invariant defined by Ozsváth-Szabó and Némethi. We reprove the fact that the $d$-invariants of Seifert homology spheres $Σ(a_1,a_2,\dots,a_n)$ and $Σ(a_1,a_2,\dots,a_n+a_1a_2\cdots a_{n-1})$ are the same using an explicit understanding of the behavior of the numerical semigroup minimally generated by $a_1a_2\cdots a_n/a_i$ for $i\in[1,n]$. We also study the maximal monotone subroots of the lattice …
