We prove an excision theorem for the singular instanton Floer homology that allows the excision surfaces to intersect the singular locus. This is an extension of the non-singular excision theorem by Kronheimer and Mrowka and the genus-zero singular excision theorem by Street. We use the singular excision theorem to define an instanton Floer homology theory for sutured manifolds with tangles. As applications, we prove that the annular Khovanov homology (1) detects the unlink, (2) detects the closure of the trivial braid, and (3) distinguishes braid closures from other links; we also prove that the annular instanton Floer homology detects the Thurston norm of meridional surfaces.
In this paper, we explore the interplay between contact structures and sutured monopole Floer homology. First, we study the behavior of contact elements, which were defined by Baldwin and Sivek, under the operation of performing Floer excisions, which was introduced to the context of sutured monopole Floer homology by Kronheimer and Mrowka. We then compute the sutured monopole Floer homology of some special balanced sutured manifolds, using tools closely related to contact geometry. For application, we obtain an exact triangle for the oriented skein relation in monopole theory and derive a con…
We study the sutured Floer homology invariants of the sutured manifold obtained by cutting a knot complement along a Seifert surface, R. We show that these invariants are finer than the "top term" of the knot Floer homology, which they contain. In particular, we use sutured Floer homology to distinguish two non-isotopic minimal genus Seifert surfaces for the knot 8_3. A key ingredient for this technique is finding appropriate Heegaard diagrams for the sutured manifold associated to the complement of a Seifert surface.
We describe the natural gluing map on sutured Floer homology which is induced by the inclusion of one sutured manifold (M',Γ') into a larger sutured manifold (M,Γ), together with a contact structure on M-M'. As an application of this gluing map, we produce a (1+1)-dimensional TQFT by dimensional reduction and study its properties.
In this paper, we generalize the work of the second author and prove a grading shifting property, in sutured monopole and instanton Floer theories, for general balanced sutured manifolds. This result has a few consequences. First, we offer an algorithm that computes the Floer homologies of a family of sutured handle-bodies. Second, we obtain a canonical decomposition of sutured monopole and instanton Floer homologies and build polytopes for these two theories, which was initially achieved by Juhász for sutured (Heegaard) Floer homology. Third, we establish a Thurston-norm detection result for …
We describe an invariant of a contact 3-manifold with convex boundary as an element of Juhász's sutured Floer homology. Our invariant generalizes the contact invariant in Heegaard Floer homology in the closed case, due to Ozsváth and Szabó. This version has some clarifications and new figures.
We show that the contact gluing map of Honda, Kazez, and Matic has a natural algebraic description. In particular, we establish a conjecture of Zarev, that his gluing map on sutured Floer homology is equivalent to the contact gluing map.
We exhibit the first example of a knot in the three-sphere with a pair of minimal genus Seifert surfaces that can be distinguished using the sutured Floer homology of their complementary manifolds together with the Spin^c-grading. This answers a question of Juhász. More precisely, we show that the Euler characteristic of the sutured Floer homology of the complementary manifolds distinguishes between the two surfaces, as does the sutured Floer polytope introduced by Juhász. Actually, we exhibit an infinite family of knots with pairs of Seifert surfaces that can be distinguished by the Euler cha…
In this paper we find a family of knots with trivial Alexander polynomial, and construct two non-isotopic Seifert surfaces for each member in our family. In order to distinguish the surfaces we study the sutured Floer homology invariants of the sutured manifolds obtained by cutting the knot complements along the Seifert surfaces. Our examples provide the first use of sutured Floer homology, and not merely its Euler characteristic(a classical torsion), to distinguish Seifert surfaces. Our technique uses a version of Floer homology, called Longitude Floer Homology in a way that enables us to byp…
Suppose $(M, γ)$ is a balanced sutured manifold and $K$ is a rationally null-homologous knot in $M$. It is known that the rank of the sutured Floer homology of $M\backslash N(K)$ is at least twice the rank of the sutured Floer homology of $M$. This paper studies the properties of $K$ when the equality is achieved for instanton homology. As an application, we show that if $L\subset S^3$ is a fixed link and $K$ is a knot in the complement of $L$, then the instanton link Floer homology of $L\cup K$ achieves the minimum rank if and only if $K$ is the unknot in $S^3\backslash L$.
We define the action of the homology group $H_1(M,\partial M)$ on the sutured Floer homology $SFH(M,γ)$. It turns out that the contact invariant $EH(M,γ,ξ)$ is usually sent to zero by this action. This fact allows us to refine an earlier result proved by Ghiggini and the author. As a corollary, we classify knots in $#^n(S^1\times S^2)$ which have simple knot Floer homology groups: They are essentially the Borromean knots.
We show that the bordered-sutured Floer invariant of the complement of a tangle in an arbitrary 3-manifold $Y$, with minimal conditions on the bordered-sutured structure, satisfies an unoriented skein exact triangle. This generalizes a theorem by Manolescu for links in $S^3$. We give a theoretical proof of this result by adapting holomorphic polygon counts to the bordered-sutured setting, and also give a combinatorial description of all maps involved and explicitly compute them. We then show that, for $Y = S^3$, our exact triangle coincides with Manolescu's. Finally, we provide a graded versio…
We define a torsion invariant T for every balanced sutured manifold (M,g), and show that it agrees with the Euler characteristic of sutured Floer homology SFH. The invariant T is easily computed using Fox calculus. With the help of T, we prove that if (M,g) is complementary to a Seifert surface of an alternating knot, then SFH(M,g) is either 0 or Z in every spin^c structure. T can also be used to show that a sutured manifold is not disk decomposable, and to distinguish between Seifert surfaces. The support of SFH gives rise to a norm z on H_2(M, \partial M; R). Then T gives a lower bound on th…
We establish a framework for extending invariants of sutured manifolds to invariants of pairs of sutured manifolds who differ by attaching a basic slice along a torus boundary component. In the particular case of (bordered-)sutured Floer homology we show that this recovers the bordered-sutured Floer homology of a corresponding bordered-sutured three-manifold - though the framework is broad enough that it should be applicable in the setting of other invariants of sutured manifolds.
For an oriented irreducible 3-manifold M with non-empty toroidal boundary, we describe how sutured Floer homology ($SFH$) can be used to determine all fibered classes in $H^1(M)$. Furthermore, we show that the $SFH$ of a balanced sutured manifold $(M,γ)$ detects which classes in $H^1(M)$ admit a taut depth one foliation such that the only compact leaves are the components of $R(γ)$. The latter had been proved earlier by the first author under the extra assumption that $H_2(M)=0$. The main technical result is that we can obtain an extremal $\text{Spin}^c$-structure $\mathfrak{s}$ (i.e., one tha…
In this paper, we extend the theory of sutured Floer homology developed by the author. We first prove an adjunction inequality, and then define a polytope P(M,g) in H^2(M,\partial M; R) that is spanned by the Spin^c-structures which support non-zero Floer homology groups. If (M,g) --> (M',g') is a taut surface decomposition, then a natural map projects P(M',g') onto a face of P(M,g); moreover, if H_2(M) = 0, then every face of P(M,g) can be obtained in this way for some surface decomposition. We show that if (M,g) is reduced, horizontally prime, and H_2(M) = 0, then P(M,g) is maximal dimension…
This article is a standalone introduction to sutured Floer homology for graduate students in geometry and topology. It is divided into three parts. The first part is an introductory level exposition of Lagrangian Floer homology. The second part is a construction of Heegaard Floer homology as a special, and slightly modified, case of Lagrangian Floer homology. The third part covers the background on sutured manifolds, the definition of sutured Floer homology, as well as a discussion of its most basic properties and implications (it detects the product, behaves nicely under surface decomposition…
We define sutured Heegaard diagrams for null-homologous knots in 3-manifolds. These diagrams are useful for computing the knot Floer homology at the top filtration level. As an application, we give a formula for the knot Floer homology of a Murasugi sum. Our result echoes Gabai's earlier works. We also show that for so-called 'semifibred' satellite knots, the top filtration term of the knot Floer homology is isomorphic to the counterpart of the companion.
For closed 3-manifolds, Heegaard Floer homology is related to the Thurston norm through results due to Ozsváth and Szabó, Ni, and Hedden. For example, given a closed 3-manifold Y, there is a bijection between vertices of the HF^+(Y) polytope carrying the group Z and the faces of the Thurston norm unit ball that correspond to fibrations of Y over the unit circle. Moreover, the Thurston norm unit ball of Y is dual to the polytope of \underline{\hfhat}(Y). We prove a similar bijection and duality result for a class of 3-manifolds with boundary called sutured manifolds. A sutured manifold is essen…
We give an explicit construction of the Honda--Kazez--Matić gluing maps in terms of contact handles. We use this to prove a duality result for turning a sutured manifold cobordism around, and to compute the trace in the sutured Floer TQFT. We also show that the decorated link cobordism maps on the hat version of link Floer homology defined by the first author via sutured manifold cobordisms and by the second author via elementary cobordisms agree.
We give a partial characterization of bordered Floer homology in terms of sutured Floer homology. The bordered algebra and modules are direct sums of certain sutured Floer complexes. The algebra multiplication and algebra action correspond to a new gluing map on SFH. It is defined algebraically, and is a special case of a more general "join" map. In a follow-up paper we show that this gluing map can be identified with the contact cobordism map of Honda-Kazez-Matic. The join map is conjecturally equivalent to the cobordism maps on SFH defined by Juhasz.
In this paper we construct a Floer-homology invariant for a natural and wide class of sutured manifolds that we call balanced. This generalizes the Heegaard Floer hat theory of closed three-manifolds and links. Our invariant is unchanged under product decompositions and is zero for nontaut sutured manifolds. As an application, an invariant of Seifert surfaces is given and is computed in a few interesting cases.
We define a "sutured topological quantum field theory", motivated by the study of sutured Floer homology of product 3-manifolds, and contact elements. We study a rich algebraic structure of suture elements in sutured TQFT, showing that it corresponds to contact elements in sutured Floer homology. We use this approach to make computations of contact elements in sutured Floer homology over $\Z$ of sutured manifolds $(D^2 \times S^1, F \times S^1)$ where $F$ is finite. This generalises previous results of the author over $\Z_2$ coefficients. Our approach elaborates upon the quantum field theoreti…
It has been a central open problem in Heegaard Floer theory whether cobordisms of links induce homomorphisms on the associated link Floer homology groups. We provide an affirmative answer by introducing a natural notion of cobordism between sutured manifolds, and showing that such a cobordism induces a map on sutured Floer homology. This map is a common generalization of the hat version of the closed 3-manifold cobordism map in Heegaard Floer theory, and the contact gluing map defined by Honda, Kazez, and Matić. We show that sutured Floer homology, together with the above cobordism maps, forms…
Using contact-geometric techniques and sutured Floer homology, we present an alternate formulation of the minus and plus version of knot Floer homology. We further show how natural constructions in the realm of contact geometry give rise to much of the formal structure relating the various versions of Heegaard Floer homology. In addition, to a Legendrian or transverse knot K in a contact manifold (Y,ξ), we associate distinguished classes EHL(K) in the minus-version of knot floer homology and EHIL(K) in the plus version, which are each invariant under Legendrian or transverse isotopies of K. Th…
We show that the sutured Khovanov homology of a balanced tangle in the product sutured manifold D x I has rank 1 if and only if the tangle is isotopic to a braid.
We show that all versions of Heegaard Floer homology, link Floer homology, and sutured Floer homology are natural. That is, they assign concrete groups to each based 3-manifold, based link, and balanced sutured manifold, respectively. Furthermore, we functorially assign isomorphisms to (based) diffeomorphisms, and show that this assignment is isotopy invariant. The proof relies on finding a simple generating set for the fundamental group of the "space of Heegaard diagrams," and then showing that Heegaard Floer homology has no monodromy around these generators. In fact, this allows us to give s…
We define a sutured cobordism category of surfaces with boundary and 3-manifolds with corners. In this category a sutured 3-manifold is regarded as a morphism from the empty surface to itself. In the process we define a new class of geometric objects, called bordered sutured manifolds, that generalize both sutured 3-manifolds and bordered 3-manifolds. We extend the definition of bordered Floer homology to these objects, giving a functor from a decorated version of the sutured category to A-infinity algebras, and A-infinity bimodules. As an application we give a way to recover the sutured homol…
We introduce a generalization of oriented tangles, which are still called tangles, so that they are in one-to-one correspondence with the sutured manifolds. We define cobordisms between sutured manifolds (tangles) by generalizing cobordisms between oriented tangles. For every commutative algebra A over Z/2Z, we define A-Tangles to be the category consisting of A-tangles, which are balanced tangles with A-colorings of the tangle strands and fixed SpinC structures, and A-cobordisms as morphisms. An A-cobordism is a cobordism with a compatible A-coloring and an affine set of SpinC structures. Ass…
We demonstrate how to combinatorially calculate the EH-class of a compatible contact structure in the sutured Floer homology group of a balanced sutured three manifold which is associated to an abstract partial open book decomposition. As an application we show that every contact three manifold (closed or with convex boundary) can be obtained by gluing tight contact handlebodies whose EH-classes are nontrivial.
We recently defined an invariant of contact manifolds with convex boundary in Kronheimer and Mrowka's sutured monopole Floer homology theory. Here, we prove that there is an isomorphism between sutured monopole Floer homology and sutured Heegaard Floer homology which identifies our invariant with the contact class defined by Honda, Kazez and Matić in the latter theory. One consequence is that the Legendrian invariants in knot Floer homology behave functorially with respect to Lagrangian concordance. In particular, these invariants provide computable and effective obstructions to the existence …
Sutured instanton Floer homology was introduced by Kronheimer and Mrowka. In this paper, we prove that for a taut balanced sutured manifold with vanishing second homology, the dimension of the sutured instanton Floer homology provides a bound on the minimal depth of all possible taut foliations on that balanced sutured manifold. The same argument can be adapted to the monopole and even the Heegaard Floer settings, which gives a partial answer to one of Juhasz's conjectures. Using the nature of instanton Floer homology, on knot complements, we can construct a taut foliation with bounded depth, …
By applying Seifert's algorithm to a special alternating diagram of a link L, one obtains a Seifert surface F of L. We show that the support of the sutured Floer homology of the sutured manifold complementary to F is affine isomorphic to the set of lattice points given as hypertrees in a certain hypergraph that is naturally associated to the diagram. This implies that the Floer groups in question are supported in a set of Spin^c structures that are the integer lattice points of a convex polytope. This property has an immediate extension to Seifert surfaces arising from homogeneous link diagram…
We show that for a tangle $T$ with $-\partial^0T \cong \partial^1 T$ the Hochschild homology of the tangle Floer homology $\widetilde{\mathit{CT}}(T)$ is equivalent to the link Floer homology of the closure $T' = T/(-\partial^0T \sim \partial^1 T)$ of the tangle, linked with the tangle axis. In addition, we show that the action of the braid group on tangle Floer homology is faithful.
Suppose H is an admissible Heegaard diagram for a balanced sutured manifold (M,γ). We prove that the number of generators of the associated sutured Heegaard Floer complex is an upper bound on the dimension of the sutured instanton homology of (M,γ). It follows, in particular, that strong L-spaces are instanton L-spaces.
This paper is a short introduction to the combinatorial version of tangle Floer homology defined in "Combinatorial tangle Floer homology". There are two equivalent definitions---one in terms of strand diagrams, and one in terms of bordered grid diagrams. We present both, discuss the correspondence, and carry out some explicit computations.
We show that the sutured Floer homology of a sutured 3-manifold of the form $(D^2 \times S^1, F \times S^1)$ can be expressed as the homology of a string-type complex, generated by certain sets of curves on $(D^2, F)$ and with a differential given by resolving crossings. We also give some generalisations of this isomorphism, computing "hat" and "infinity" versions of this string homology. In addition to giving interesting elementary facts about the algebra of curves on surfaces, these isomorphisms are inspired by, and establish further, connections between invariants from Floer homology and st…
We discuss generalizations of Ozsvath-Szabo's spectral sequence relating Khovanov homology and Heegaard Floer homology, focusing attention on an explicit relationship between natural Z (resp., 1/2 Z) gradings appearing in the two theories. These two gradings have simple representation-theoretic (resp., geometric) interpretations, which we also review.
We define an invariant of contact 3-manifolds with convex boundary using Kronheimer and Mrowka's sutured monopole Floer homology theory (SHM). Our invariant can be viewed as a generalization of Kronheimer and Mrowka's contact invariant for closed contact 3-manifolds and as the monopole Floer analogue of Honda, Kazez, and Matić's contact invariant in sutured Heegaard Floer homology (SFH). In the process of defining our invariant, we construct maps on SHM associated to contact handle attachments, analogous to those defined by Honda, Kazez, and Matić in SFH. We use these maps to establish a bypas…
In a previous paper, Vértesi and the first author used grid-like Heegaard diagrams to define tangle Floer homology, which associates to a tangle $T$ a differential graded bimodule $\widetilde{\mathrm{CT}} (T)$. If $L$ is obtained by gluing together $T_1, \dotsc, T_m$, then the knot Floer homology $\hat{\mathrm{HFK}}(L)$ of $L$ can be recovered from $\widetilde{\mathrm{CT}} (T_1), \dotsc, \widetilde{\mathrm{CT}} (T_m)$. In the present paper, we prove combinatorially that tangle Floer homology satisfies unoriented and oriented skein relations, generalizing the skein exact triangles for knot Floe…
Inspired by work of Lipshitz-Sarkar, we show that the module structure on link Floer homology detects split links. Using results of Ni, Alishahi-Lipshitz, and Lipshitz-Sarkar, we establish an analogous detection result for sutured Floer homology.
We show that bordered Heegaard Floer homology detects incompressible surfaces and bordered-sutured Floer homology detects partly boundary parallel tangles and bridges, in natural ways. For example, there is a bimodule Lambda so that the tensor product of CFD(Y) and Lambda is Hom-orthogonal to CFD(Y) if and only if the boundary of Y admits an essential compressing disk. In the process, we sharpen a nonvanishing result of Ni's. We also extend Lipshitz-Ozsváth-Thurston's "factoring" algorithm for computing HF-hat to compute bordered-sutured Floer homology, to make both results on detecting incomp…
Let K in S^3 be a knot, and let \widetilde{K} denote the preimage of K inside its double branched cover, Σ(K). We prove, for each integer n > 1, the existence of a spectral sequence from Khovanov's categorification of the reduced n-colored Jones polynomial of the mirror of K to the knot Floer homology of (Σ(K),\widetilde{K}) (when n odd) and to (S^3, K # K) (when n even). A corollary of our result is that Khovanov's categorification of the reduced n-colored Jones polynomial detects the unknot whenever n>1.
We compute the effect of concordance surgery, a generalization of knot surgery defined using a self-concordance of a knot, on the Ozsváth-Szabó 4-manifold invariant. The formula involves the graded Lefschetz number of the concordance map on knot Floer homology. The proof uses the sutured Floer TQFT, and a version of sutured Floer homology perturbed by a 2-form.
Sutured Floer homology, denoted by SFH, is an invariant of balanced sutured manifolds previously defined by the author. In this paper we give a formula that shows how this invariant changes under surface decompositions. In particular, if (M, γ)--> (M', γ') is a sutured manifold decomposition then SFH(M',γ') is a direct summand of SFH(M, γ). To prove the decomposition formula we give an algorithm that computes SFH(M,γ) from a balanced diagram defining (M,γ) that generalizes the algorithm of Sarkar and Wang. As a corollary we obtain that if (M, γ) is taut then SFH(M,γ) is non-zero. Other applica…
We use the theory of sutured TQFT to classify contact elements in the sutured Floer homology, with $\Z$ coefficients, of certain sutured manifolds of the form $(Σ\times S^1, F \times S^1)$ where $Σ$ is an annulus or punctured torus. Using this classification, we give a new proof that the contact invariant in sutured Floer homology with $\Z$ coefficients of a contact structure with Giroux torsion vanishes. We also give a new proof of Massot's theorem that the contact invariant vanishes for a contact structure on $(Σ\times S^1, F \times S^1)$ described by an isolating dividing set.
These are lecture notes from a series of lectures at the SMF summer school on "Geometric and Quantum Topology in Dimension 3", June 2014. The focus is on Heegaard Floer homology from the perspective of sutured Floer homology.
Lawrence Roberts, extending the work of Ozsvath-Szabo, showed how to associate to a link, L, in the complement of a fixed unknot, B, in S^3, a spectral sequence from the Khovanov homology of a link in a thickened annulus to the knot Floer homology of the preimage of B inside the double-branched cover of L. In a previous paper, we extended Ozsvath-Szabo's spectral sequence in a different direction, constructing for each knot K in S^3 and each positive integer n, a spectral sequence from Khovanov's categorification of the reduced, n-colored Jones polynomial to the sutured Floer homology of a red…
We introduce a contact invariant in the bordered sutured Heegaard Floer homology of a three-manifold with boundary. The input for the invariant is a contact manifold $(M, ξ, \mathcal{F})$ whose convex boundary is equipped with a signed singular foliation $\mathcal{F}$ closely related to the characteristic foliation. Such a manifold admits a family of foliated open book decompositions classified by a Giroux Correspondence, as described in earlier work of Licata and Vértesi. We use a special class of foliated open books to construct admissible bordered sutured Heegaard diagrams and identify well…
Ozsvath and Szabo recently constructed an algebraically defined invariant of tangles which takes the form of a DA bimodule. This invariant is expected to compute knot Floer homology. The authors have a similar construction for open braids and their plat closures which can be viewed as a filtered DA bimodule over the same algebras. For a closed diagram, this invariant computes the Khovanov homology of the knot or link. We show that forgetting the filtration, our DA bimodules are homotopy equivalent to a suitable version of the Ozsvath- Szabo bimodules. In addition to giving a relationship betwe…
Kronheimer and Mrowka defined invariants of balanced sutured manifolds using monopole and instanton Floer homology. Their invariants assign isomorphism classes of modules to balanced sutured manifolds. In this paper, we introduce refinements of these invariants which assign much richer algebraic objects called projectively transitive systems of modules to balanced sutured manifolds and isomorphisms of such systems to diffeomorphisms of balanced sutured manifolds. Our work provides the foundation for extending these sutured Floer theories to other interesting functorial frameworks as well, and …
We construct maps on hat Heegaard Floer homology for cobordisms decorated with graphs. The graph TQFT allows for cobordisms with disconnected ends. Our construction uses Juhász's sutured Floer TQFT. We compute the maps for several elementary graph cobordisms. As an application, we compute the action of the fundamental group on hat Heegaard Floer homology.
