Jae Choon Cha, Kent E. Orr, Mark Powell
We relate certain abelian invariants of a knot, namely the Alexander polynomial, the Blanchfield form, and the Arf invariant, to intersection data of a Whitney tower in the 4-ball bounded by the knot. We also give a new 3-dimensional algorithm for computing these invariants.
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These introductory notes on Whitney towers in 4-manifolds, as developed in collaboration with Jim Conant and Peter Teichner, are an expansion of three expository lectures given at the Winter Braids X conference February 2020 in Pisa, Italy. Topics presented include local manipulations of surfaces in 4-space, fundamental definitions related to Whitney towers and their associated trees, geometric Jacobi identities, the classification of order n twisted Whitney towers in the 4-ball and higher-order Arf invariants, and low-order Whitney towers on 2-spheres in 4-manifolds and related invariants.
We study the structure of the exteriors of gropes and Whitney towers in dimension 4, focusing on their fundamental groups. In particular we introduce a notion of unknottedness of gropes and Whitney towers in the 4-sphere. We prove that various modifications of gropes and Whitney towers preserve the unknottedness and do not enlarge the fundamental group. We exhibit handlebody structures of the exteriors of gropes and Whitney towers constructed by earlier methods of Cochran, Teichner, Horn, and the first author, and use them to construct examples of unknotted gropes and Whitney towers. As an app…
We present complete classifications of links in the 3-sphere modulo framed and twisted Whitney towers in a rational homology 4-ball. This provides a geometric characterization of the vanishing of the Milnor invariants of links in terms of Whitney towers. Our result also says that the higher order Arf invariants, which are conjectured to be nontrivial, measure the potential difference between the Whitney tower theory in rational homology 4-balls and that in the 4-ball extensively developed by Conant, Schneiderman and Teichner.
We introduce a notion of symmetric Whitney tower cobordism between bordered 3-manifolds, aiming at the study of homology cobordism and link concordance. It is motivated by the symmetric Whitney tower approach to slicing knots and links initiated by Cochran, Orr, and Teichner. We give amenable Cheeger-Gromov rho-invariant obstructions to bordered 3-manifolds being Whitney tower cobordant. Our obstruction is related to and generalizes several prior known results, and also gives new interesting cases. As an application, our method applied to link exteriors reveals new structures on (Whitney tower…
Many open problems and important theorems in low-dimensional topology have been formulated as statements about certain 2--complexes called gropes. This paper describes a precise correspondence between embedded gropes in 4--manifolds and the failure of the Whitney move in terms of iterated `towers' of Whitney disks. The `flexibility' of these Whitney towers is used to demonstrate some geometric consequences for knot and link concordance connected to n-solvability, k-cobordism and grope concordance. The key observation is that the essential structure of gropes and Whitney towers can be described…
We show that Tim Cochran's invariants $β^i(L)$ of a $2$-component link $L$ in the $3$--sphere can be computed as intersection invariants of certain 2-complexes in the $4$--ball with boundary $L$. These 2-complexes are special types of twisted Whitney towers, which we call {\em Cochran towers}, and which exhibit a new phenomenon: A Cochran tower of order $2k$ allows the computation of the $β^i$ invariants for all $i\leq k$, i.e. simultaneous extraction of invariants from a Whitney tower at multiple orders. This is in contrast with the order $n$ Milnor invariants (requiring order $n$ Whitney tow…
This paper computes Whitney tower filtrations of classical links. Whitney towers consist of iterated stages of Whitney disks and allow a tree-valued intersection theory, showing that the associated graded quotients of the filtration are finitely generated abelian groups. Twisted Whitney towers are studied and a new quadratic refinement of the intersection theory is introduced, measuring Whitney disk framing obstructions. It is shown that the filtrations are completely classified by Milnor invariants together with new higher-order Sato-Levine and higher-order Arf invariants, which are obstructi…
The first part of this paper completes the classification of Whitney towers in the 4-ball that was started in three related papers. We provide an algebraic framework allowing the computations of the graded groups associated to geometric filtrations of classical link concordance by order n (twisted) Whitney towers in the 4-ball. Higher-order Sato-Levine invariants and higher-order Arf invariants are defined and shown to be the obstructions to framing a twisted Whitney tower. In the second part of this paper, a general theory of quadratic forms is developed and then specialized from the non-comm…
In this paper, we prove a conjecture of Friedl and Powell that their Casson-Gordon type invariant of 2-component link with linking number one is actually an obstruction to being height 3.5 Whitney tower/grope concordant to the Hopf Link. The proof employs the notion of solvable cobordism of 3-manifolds with boundary, which was introduced by Cha. We also prove that the Blanchfield form and the Alexander polynomial of links in $S^3$ give obstructions to height 3 Whitney tower/grope concordance. This generalizes the results of Hillman and Kawauchi.
The first part of this paper exposits a simple geometric description of the Kirby-Siebenmann invariant of a 4--manifold in terms of a quadratic refinement of its intersection form. This is the first in a sequence of higher-order intersection invariants of Whitney towers studied by the authors, particularly for the 4--ball. In the second part of this paper, a general theory of quadratic forms is developed and then specialized from the non-commutative to the commutative to finally, the symmetric settings. The intersection invariant for twisted Whitney towers is shown to be the universal symmetri…
A geometric characterization of the Arf invariant of a knot in the 3-sphere is given in terms of two kinds of 4-dimensional bordisms, half-gropes and Whitney towers. These types of bordisms have associated complexities class and order which filter the condition of bordism by an embedded annulus, i.e. knot concordance, and it is shown constructively that the Arf invariant is exactly the obstruction to cobording pairs of knots by half-gropes and Whitney towers of arbitrarily high class and order. This illustrates geometrically how, in the setting of knot concordance, the Vassiliev (isotopy) inva…
This paper describes the relationship between the first non-vanishing Milnor invariants of a classical link and the intersection invariant of a twisted Whitney tower. This is a certain 2-complex in the 4-ball, built from immersed disks bounded by the given link in the 3-sphere together with finitely many `layers' of Whitney disks. The intersection invariant is a higher-order generalization of the intersection number between two immersed disks in the 4-ball, well known to give the linking number of the link on the boundary, which measures intersections among the Whitney disks and the disks boun…
We continue to develop an obstruction theory for embedding 2-spheres into 4-manifolds in terms of Whitney towers. The proposed intersection invariants take values in certain graded abelian groups generated by labelled trivalent trees, and with relations well known from the 3-dimensional theory of finite type invariants. Surprisingly, the same exact relations arise in 4 dimensions, for example the Jacobi (or IHX) relation comes in our context from the freedom of choosing Whitney arcs. We use the finite type theory to show that our invariants agree with the (leading term of the tree part of the)…
Clasper Concordance, Whitney towers and repeating Milnor invariants
本文证明链环在 4-球中界定度为 k 的 Whitney 塔等价于与平凡链环 $C_k$-一致，并利用重复扭曲 Whitney 塔分类了扭曲自 $C_k$-一致性，基于 Milnor 和 Arf 不变量。
We construct many examples of non-slice knots in 3-space that cannot be distinguished from slice knots by previously known invariants. Using Whitney towers in place of embedded disks, we define a geometric filtration of the 3-dimensional topological knot concordance group. The bottom part of the filtration exhibits all classical concordance invariants, including the Casson-Gordon invariants. As a first step, we construct an infinite sequence of new obstructions that vanish on slice knots. These take values in the L-theory of skew fields associated to certain {\em universal} groups. Finally, we…
This paper describes grope and Whitney tower filtrations on the set of concordance classes of classical links in terms of class and order respectively. Using the tree-valued intersection theory of Whitney towers, the associated graded quotients are shown to be finitely generated abelian groups under a (surprisingly) well-defined connected sum operation. Twisted Whitney towers are also introduced, along with a corresponding quadratic enhancement of the intersection theory for framed Whitney towers that measures Whitney-disk framing obstructions. The obstruction theory in the framed setting is s…
We show how to measure the failure of the Whitney trick in dimension 4 by constructing higher- order intersection invariants of Whitney towers built from iterated Whitney disks on immersed surfaces in 4-manifolds. For Whitney towers on immersed disks in the 4-ball, we identify some of these new invariants with previously known link invariants like Milnor, Sato-Levine and Arf invariants. We also define higher- order Sato-Levine and Arf invariants and show that these invariants detect the obstructions to framing a twisted Whitney tower. Together with Milnor invariants, these higher-order invaria…
Whitney tower concordance and knots in homology spheres
本文证明模去Whitney塔过滤的任意项，同调球面中的纽结或链环均等价于$S^3$中的纽结或链环，表明该过滤无法区分二者，并恢复了可解过滤的类似结论。
We establish a relationship between the Jones polynomial of generalized weaving knots of type $W(3,n,m)$ and the Chebyshev polynomial of the first kind. Consequently, we prove that the coefficients of the Jones polynomial of weaving knots are basically the Whitney numbers of Lucas lattices. Furthermore, we give an explicit formula for the Alexander polynomial of weaving knots $W(3,n)$ and we prove that it satisfies Fox's trapezoidal conjecture.
The n-solvable filtration $\{\mathcal{F}_n\}_{n=0}^\infty$ of the smooth knot concordance group (denoted by $\mathcal{C}$), due to Cochran-Orr-Teichner, has been instrumental in the study of knot concordance in recent years. Part of its significance is due to the fact that certain geometric characterizations of a knot imply membership in various levels of the filtration. We show the counterpart of this fact for two new filtrations of $\mathcal{C}$ due to Cochran-Harvey-Horn, the positive and negative filtrations, denoted by $\{\mathcal{P}_n\}_{n=0}^\infty$ and $\{\mathcal{N}_n\}_{n=0}^\infty$ …
We describe Taylor towers for spaces of knots arising from Goodwillie-Weiss calculus of the embedding functor and extend the configuration space integrals of Bott and Taubes from spaces of knots to the stages of the towers. We show that certain combinations of integrals, indexed by trivalent diagrams, yield cohomology classes of the stages of the tower, just as they do for ordinary knots.
This work continues the study of a homotopy-theoretic construction of the author inspired by the Bott-Taubes integrals. Bott and Taubes constructed knot invariants by integrating differential forms along the fiber of a bundle over the space of knots. Their techniques were later used by Cattaneo et al. to construct real "Vassiliev-type" cohomology classes in spaces of knots in higher-dimensional Euclidean space. By doing this integration via a Pontrjagin-Thom construction, we constructed cohomology classes in the knot space with arbitrary coefficients. We later showed that a refinement of this …
In his study of the group of homology cylinders, J. Levine made the conjecture that a certain homomorphism eta': T -> D' is an isomorphism. Here T is an abelian group on labeled oriented trees, and D' is the kernel of a bracketing map on a quasi-Lie algebra. Both T and D' have strong connections to a variety of topological settings, including the mapping class group, homology cylinders, finite type invariants, Whitney tower intersection theory, and the homology of the group of automorphisms of the free group. In this paper, we confirm Levine's conjecture. This is a central step in classifying …
It is known that if any prime power branched cyclic cover of a knot in the 3-sphere is a homology sphere, then the knot has vanishing Casson-Gordon invariants. We construct infinitely many examples of (topologically) non-slice knots in the 3-sphere whose prime power branched cyclic covers are homology spheres. We show that these knots generate an infinite rank subgroup of F_(1.0)/F_(1.5) for which Casson-Gordon invariants vanish in Cochran-Orr-Teichner's filtration of the classical knot concordance group . As a corollary, it follows that Casson-Gordon invariants are not a complete set of obstr…
Along with excursions into manifolds with corners, resolution towers of Thom and Whitney stratifications, I show that for a generic gradientlike vector field on a manifold with a Morse function, the stable manifolds give a CW decomposition of the manifold. This has been done before.
We show that the map on components from the space of classical long knots to the n-th stage of its Goodwillie-Weiss embedding calculus tower is a map of monoids whose target is an abelian group and which is invariant under clasper surgery. We deduce that this map on components is a finite type-(n-1) knot invariant. We also compute the second page in total degree zero for the spectral sequence converging to the components of this tower as Z-modules of primitive chord diagrams, providing evidence for the conjecture that the tower is a universal finite-type invariant over the integers. Key to the…
Knots and links in 3-manifolds are studied by applying intersection invariants to singular concordances. The resulting link invariants generalize the Arf invariant, the mod 2 Sato-Levine invariants, and Milnor's triple linking numbers. Besides fitting into a general theory of Whitney towers, these invariants provide obstructions to the existence of a singular concordance which can be homotoped to an embedding after stabilization by connected sums with $S^2\times S^2$. Results include classifications of stably slice links in orientable 3-manifolds, stable knot concordance in products of an orie…
We associate a Taylor tower supplied by calculus of the embedding functor to the space of long knots and study its cohomology spectral sequence. The combinatorics of the spectral sequence along the line of total degree zero leads to chord diagrams with relations as in finite type knot theory. We show that the spectral sequence collapses along this line and that the Taylor tower represents a universal finite type knot invariant.
Embedding obstructions in ${\mathbb R}^d$ from the Goodwillie-Weiss calculus and Whitney disks
本文利用 Goodwillie-Weiss 塔提出有限 CW 复形嵌入 $\mathbb{R}^d$ 的障碍理论，证明其几何类比与 van Kampen 经典障碍之后的首个障碍实质等价，并揭示其与构型空间 Arnold 类的关联。
Scannell and Sinha considered a spectral sequence to calculate the rational homotopy groups of spaces of long knots in n-dimensional Euclidean space, for n greater than or equal to 4. At the end of their paper they conjecture that when n is odd, the terms on the antidiagonal on the second page precisely give the space of primitive Feynman diagrams related to the theory of Vassiliev invariants. In this paper we prove that conjecture. This has the application that the path components of the terms of the Taylor tower for the space of classical long knots are in one-to-one correspondence with quot…
We define an integer valued invariant for two-component links in S^3 by counting projective SU(2) representations of the link group having non-trivial second Stiefel-Whitney class. We show that our invariant is, up to sign, the linking number of the link. Our construction generalizes that of X.-S. Lin who defined a similar invariant for knots in S^3; his invariant equals half the knot signature.
Relative self-linking and linking "numbers" for pairs of knots in oriented 3-manifolds are defined in terms of intersection invariants of immersed surfaces in 4-manifolds. The resulting concordance invariants generalize the usual homological notion of linking by taking into account the fundamental group of the ambient manifold and often map onto infinitely generated groups. The knot invariants generalize the cyclic (type 1) invariants of Kirk and Livingston and when taken with respect to certain preferred knots, called spherical knots, relative self-linking numbers are characterized geometrica…
We prove the nontriviality, at all integral levels n, of the filtration, F_n, of the classical topological knot concordance group recently defined by the authors and Kent Orr [COT]. Recall that this filtration is significant not only because of it's strong connection to Whitney tower constructions of Casson and Freedman, but also because all previously-known concordance invariants are related to the first few terms in the filtration. In [COT] we proved nontriviality at the first new level (n=3) by using von Neumann $ρ$-invariants of the 3-manifolds obtained by zero surgery on the knots. Here, …
Goodwillie's cosimplicial model for the space of long knots and its applications
本研究推导了Goodwillie提出的余单纯空间与区间开集到紧生成弱Hausdorff空间的良好函子间的对应，借此算出长纽结嵌入函子Taylor塔对应纤维化塔的整系数Bousfield–Kan同伦谱序列第一页，并引入(i,n)-标记单位三价图给出d¹微分的组合解释。
We compare two naturally arising notions of unknotting number for 2-spheres in the 4-sphere: namely, the minimal number of 1-handle stabilizations needed to obtain an unknotted surface, and the minimal number of Whitney moves required in a regular homotopy to the unknotted 2-sphere. We refer to these invariants as the stabilization number and the Casson-Whitney number of the sphere, respectively. Using both algebraic and geometric techniques, we show that the stabilization number is bounded above by one more than the Casson-Whitney number. We also provide explicit families of spheres for which…
We study the group of rational concordance classes of codimension two knots in rational homology spheres. We give a full calculation of its algebraic theory by developing a complete set of new invariants. For computation, we relate these invariants with limiting behaviour of the Artin reciprocity over an infinite tower of number fields and analyze it using tools from algebraic number theory. In higher dimensions it classifies the rational concordance group of knots whose ambient space satisfies a certain cobordism theoretic condition. In particular, we construct infinitely many torsion element…
Cubes, cacti, and framed long knots
该研究定义了射影无刺仙人掌operad对标架长纽结空间泰勒塔各层的作用，证明其与Budney小2-立方体作用的空间相容性，改进了相关Vassiliev不变量猜想的前期结果，还重新证明了Sakai发现的一类Browder括号类的非平凡性。
A holonomic knot is a knot in 3-space which arises as the 2-jet extension of a smooth function on the circle. A holonomic knot associated to a generic function is naturally framed by the blackboard framing of the knot diagram associated to the 1-jet extension of the function. There are two classical invariants of framed knot diagrams: the Whitney index (rotation number) W and the self linking number S. For a framed holonomic knot we show that W is bounded above by the negative of the braid index of the knot, and that the sum of W and |S| is bounded by the negative of the Euler characteristic o…
We obtain new invariants of topological link concordance and homology cobordism of 3-manifolds from Hirzebruch-type intersection form defects of towers of iterated p-covers. Our invariants can extract geometric information from an arbitrary depth of the derived series of the fundamental group, and can detect torsion which is invisible via signature invariants. Applications illustrating these features include the following: (1) There are infinitely many homology equivalent rational 3-spheres which are indistinguishable via multisignatures, eta-invariants, and L2-signatures but have distinct hom…
The $p$-adic limits of class numbers in $\mathbb{Z}_p$-towers
本文结合算术拓扑讨论Weber类数问题变体，证明整体域$\mathbb{Z}_p$-扩张及紧3-流形$\mathbb{Z}_p$-覆盖中类数的$p$-进收敛性，建立多项式$p$-幂次循环结式$p$-进极限显式公式，并深入研究相关结与椭圆曲线，完成特定情况列表。
Arithmetic invariants of torus links
本文从算术视角研究环面纽结与链环 $T_{p,q}$ 的亚历山大多项式零点分布，证明其渐近均匀分布于单位圆并给出本原单位根频率公式，同时确定相应分歧覆盖的岩泽不变量及同调增长的次指数性质。
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