The cobordism distance between knots, d(K,J), equals the four-genus g_4(K # -J). We consider d(K,K^r), where K^r is the reverse of K. It is elementary that 0 \le d(K,K^r) \le 2g_4(K) and it is known that there are knots K for which d(K,K^r) is arbitrarily large. Here it is shown that for any knot for which g_4(K) = g_3(K) (such as non-slice knots with g_3(K) = 1 or strongly quasi-positive knots), one has that d(K,K^r) is strictly less that twice g_4(K). It is shown that for arbitrary positive g, there exist knots for which d(K,K^r) = g = g_4(K). There are no known examples for which d(K,K^r) > g_4(K).
In [D.A. Fedoseev, V.O. Manturov, A sliceness criterion for odd free knots,arXiv:1707.04923], the authors proved a sliceness criterion for odd free knots: free knots with odd chords. In the present paper we give a similar criterion for stably odd free knots. Some additional results on knot sliceness and cobordism are given.
We study cobordisms and cobordisms rel boundary of PL locally-flat disk knots $D^{n-2}\into D^n$. Cobordisms of disk knots that do not fix the boundary sphere knots are easily classified by the cobordism properties of these boundaries, and any two even-dimensional disk knots with isotopic boundary knots are cobordant rel boundary. However, the cobordism rel boundary theory of odd-dimensional disk knots is more subtle. Generalizing results of Levine on cobordism of sphere knots, we define disk knot Seifert matrices and show that two higher-dimensional disk knots with isotopic boundaries are cob…
We review some recent results in knot concordance and homology cobordism. The proofs rely on various forms of Heegaard Floer homology. We also discuss related open problems.
We consider free symmetries on cobordisms between knots. We classify which freely periodic knots bound equivariant surfaces in the 4-ball in terms of corresponding homology classes in lens spaces. A key tool is the homology cobordism classification of lens spaces using d-invariants. We give a numerical condition determining the free periods for which torus knots bound equivariant surfaces in the 4-ball.
In this paper we study the cobordism of algebraic knots associated with weighted homogeneous polynomials, and in particular Brieskorn polynomials. Under some assumptions we prove that the associated algebraic knots are cobordant if and only if the Brieskorn polynomials have the same exponents.
We determine the pairs of torus knots that have a genus one cobordism between them, with one notable exception. This is done by combining obstructions using $ν^+$ from the Heegaard Floer knot complex and explicit constructions of cobordisms. As an application, we determine the pairs of torus knots related by a single crossing change. Also, we determine the pairs of Thurston-Bennequin number maximizing Legendrian torus knots that have a genus one exact Lagrangian cobordism, with one exception.
We construct an invariant of virtual knots which is a sliceness obstruction and sensitive to the $Δ$-move. This invariants works if $\Z_{2}\oplus \Z_{2}$-index of chords is present.
In this paper we define and investigate Z/2-homology cobordism invariants of Z/2-homology 3-spheres which turn out to be related to classical invariants of knots. As an application we show that many lens spaces have infinite order in the Z/2-homology cobordism group and we prove a lower bound for the slice genus of a knot on which integral surgery yields a given Z/2-homology sphere. We also give some new examples of 3-manifolds which cannot be obtained by integral surgery on a knot.
We fix a null-homologous, homotopically essential knot $J$ in a 3-manifold with PTFA fundamental group and study concordance of knots that are homotopic to $J$. We construct an infinite family of knots that are characteristic to $J$, and then use $L^2$-methods to show that they are not concordant to $J$.
This paper defines a theory of cobordism for virtual knots and studies this theory for standard and rotational virtual knots and links. Non-trivial examples of virtual slice knots are given. Determinations of the four-ball genus of positive virtual knots are given using the results of a companion paper by the author and Heather Dye and Aaron Kaestner. Problems related to band-passing are explained, and a theory of isotopy of virtual surfaces is formulated in terms of a generalization of the Yoshikawa moves.
We construct cobordisms of small genus between torus knots and use them to determine the cobordism distance between torus knots of small braid index. In fact, the cobordisms we construct arise as the intersection of a smooth algebraic curve in $\mathbb{C}^2$ with the unit 4-ball from which a 4-ball of smaller radius is removed. Connections to the realization problem of $A_n$-singularities on algebraic plane curves and the adjacency problem for plane curve singularities are discussed. To obstruct the existence of cobordisms, we use Ozsváth, Stipsicz, and Szabó's $Υ$-invariant, which we provide …
The $0$-surgeries of two knots $K_1$ and $K_2$ are homology cobordant rel meridians if there exists a $\mathbb{Z}$-homology cobordism $X$ between them such that the two knot meridians are in the same homology class in $H_{1}(X,\mathbb{Z})$. In this paper, we give a pair of rationally slice knots which are not smoothly concordant but whose $0$-surgeries are homology cobordant rel meridians. One knot in the pair is the figure eight knot, which has concordance order two; all previous examples of such pairs of knots are infinite order.
This paper studies cobordism and concordance for virtual knots. We define the affine index polynomial, prove that it is a concordance invariant for knots and links (explaining when it is defined for links), show that it is also invariant under certain forms of labeled cobordism and study a number of examples in relation to these phenomena. Information on determinations of the four-ball genus of some virtual knots is obtained by via the affine index polynomial in conjunction with results on the genus of positive virtual knots using joint work with Dye and Kaestner.
We introduce an equivalence relation, called stable equivalence, on knot diagrams and closed curves on surfaces. We give bijections between the set of abstract knots, the set of virtual knots, and the set of the stable equivalence classes of knot diagrams on surfaces. Using these bijections, we define concordance and link homology for virtual links. As an application, it is shown that Kauffman's example of a virtual knot diagram is not equivalent to a classical knot diagram.
For a connected cobordism S between two knots K1,K2 in S3, we establish an inequality involving the number of local maxima, the genus of S, and the torsion orders of Kht(K1),Kht(K2), where Kht denotes Lee's perturbation of Khovanov homology. This shows that the torsion order gives a lower bound for the band-unlinking number.
We explain new developments in classical knot theory in 3 and 4~dimensions, i.e. we study knots in 3-space, up to isotopy as well as up to concordance. In dimension~3 we give a geometric interpretation of the Kontsevich integral (joint with Jim Conant), and in dimension 4 we introduce new concordance invariants using von Neumann signatures (joint with Tim Cochran and Kent Orr). The common geometric feature of our results is the notion of a grope cobordism.
We explain the notion of a grope cobordism between two knots in a 3-manifold. Each grope cobordism has a type that can be described by a rooted unitrivalent tree. By filtering these trees in different ways, we show how the Goussarov-Habiro approach to finite type invariants of knots is closely related to our notion of grope cobordism. Thus our results can be viewed as a geometric interpretation of finite type invariants. An interesting refinement we study are knots modulo symmetric grope cobordism in 3-space. On one hand this theory maps onto the usual Vassiliev theory and on the other hand it…
In the present paper, we construct a simple invariant which provides a sliceness obstruction for {\em free knots}. This obstruction provides a new point of view to the problem of studying cobordisms of curves immersed in 2-surfaces, a problem previously studied by Carter, Turaev, Orr, and others. The obstruction to sliceness is constructed by using the notion of {\em parity} recently introduced by the author into the study of virtual knots and their modifications. This invariant turns out to be an obstruction for cobordisms of higher genera with some additional constraints.
Given a connected cobordism between two knots in the 3-sphere, our main result is an inequality involving torsion orders of the knot Floer homology of the knots, and the number of local maxima and the genus of the cobordism. This has several topological applications: The torsion order gives lower bounds on the bridge index and the band-unlinking number of a knot, the fusion number of a ribbon knot, and the number of minima appearing in a slice disk of a knot. It also gives a lower bound on the number of bands appearing in a ribbon concordance between two knots. Our bounds on the bridge index a…
We use Ozsváth, Stipsicz, and Szabó's Upsilon-invariant to provide bounds on cobordisms between knots that `contain full-twists'. In particular, we recover and generalize a classical consequence of the Morton-Franks-Williams inequality for knots: positive braids that contain a positive full-twist realize the braid index of their closure. We also establish that quasi-positive braids that are sufficiently twisted realize the minimal braid index among all knots that are concordant to their closure. Finally, we provide inductive formulas for the Upsilon invariant of torus knots and compare it to t…
Let $\widehat{\mathcal{C}}_{\mathbb{Z}}$ denote the group of knots in homology spheres that bound homology balls, modulo smooth concordance in homology cobordisms. Answering a question of Matsumoto, the second author previously showed that the natural map from the smooth knot concordance group $\mathcal{C}$ to $\widehat{\mathcal{C}}_{\mathbb{Z}}$ is not surjective. Using tools from Heegaard Floer homology, we show that the cokernel of this map, which can be understood as the non-locally-flat piecewise-linear concordance group, is infinitely generated and contains elements of infinite order.
In this paper, we compute the slice genus for many low-crossing virtual knots. For instance, we show that 1295 out of 92800 virtual knots with 6 or fewer crossings are slice, and that all but 248 of the rest are not slice. Key to these results are computations of Turaev's graded genus, which we show extends to give an invariant of virtual knot concordance. The graded genus is remarkably effective as a slice obstruction, and we develop an algorithm that applies virtual unknotting operations to determine the slice genus of many virtual knots with 6 or fewer crossings.
We investigate cobordisms of free knots. Free knots and links are also called homotopy classes of Gauss words and phrases. We define a new strong invariant of free knots which allows to detect free knots not cobordant to the trivial one.
We reconsider the su(3) link homology theory defined by Khovanov in math.QA/0304375 and generalized by Mackaay and Vaz in math.GT/0603307. With some slight modifications, we describe the theory as a map from the planar algebra of tangles to a planar algebra of (complexes of) `cobordisms with seams' (actually, a `canopolis'), making it local in the sense of Bar-Natan's local su(2) theory of math.GT/0410495. We show that this `seamed cobordism canopolis' decategorifies to give precisely what you'd both hope for and expect: Kuperberg's su(3) spider defined in q-alg/9712003. We conjecture an answe…
The following is a long-standing open question: "If the zero-framed surgeries on two knots in the 3-sphere are integral homology cobordant, are the knots themselves concordant?" We show that an obvious rational version of this question has a negative answer. Namely, we give examples of knots whose zero-framed surgeries are rational homology cobordant 3-manifolds, wherein the knots are not rationally concordant (that is not concordant in any rational homology S^3 x [0,1]). Specifically, we prove that, for any positive integer p and any knot K, the zero framed surgery on K is Z[1/p]-homology cob…
We consider the question: "If the zero-framed surgeries on two oriented knots in the 3-sphere are integral homology cobordant, preserving the homology class of the positive meridians, are the knots themselves concordant?" We show that this question has a negative answer in the smooth category, even for topologically slice knots. To show this we first prove that the zero-framed surgery on K is Z-homology cobordant to the zero-framed surgery on many of its winding number one satellites P(K). Then we prove that in many cases the tau and s-invariants of K and P(K) differ. Consequently neither tau …
We consider the question of when a rational homology 3-sphere is rational homology cobordant to a connected sum of lens spaces. We prove that every rational homology cobordism class in the subgroup generated by lens spaces is represented by a unique connected sum of lens spaces whose first homology embeds in any other element in the same class. As a first consequence, we show that several natural maps to the rational homology cobordism group have infinite rank cokernels. Further consequences include a divisibility condition between the determinants of a connected sum of 2-bridge knots and any …
We prove that the LOSS and GRID invariants of Legendrian links in knot Floer homology behave in certain functorial ways with respect to decomposable Lagrangian cobordisms in the symplectization of the standard contact structure on $\mathbb{R}^3$. Our results give new, computable, and effective obstructions to the existence of such cobordisms.
The paper contains an essentially self-contained treatment of Khovanov homology, Khovanov-Lee homology as well as the Rasmussen invariant for virtual knots and virtual knot cobordisms which directly applies to classical knot and classical knot cobordisms. To do so, we give an alternate formulation for the Manturov definition of Khovanov homology for virtual knots and links with arbitrary coefficients. This approach uses cut loci on the knot diagram to induce a conjugation operator in the Frobenius algebra. We then discuss the implications of the maps induced in the aforementioned theory to the…
In the symplectization of standard contact $3$-space, $\mathbb R \times \mathbb R^3$, it is known that an orientable Lagrangian cobordism between a Legendrian knot and itself, also known as an orientable Lagrangian endocobordism for the Legendrian knot, must have genus $0$. We show that any Legendrian knot has a non-orientable Lagrangian endocobordism, and that the crosscap genus of such a non-orientable Lagrangian endocobordism must be a positive multiple of $4$. The more restrictive exact, non-orientable Lagrangian endocobordisms do not exist for any exactly fillable Legendrian knot but do e…
In this note we use Heegaard Floer homology to study smooth cobordisms of algebraic knots and complex deformations of cusp singularities of curves. The main tool will be the concordance invariant $ν^+$: we study its behaviour with respect to connected sums, providing an explicit formula in the case of L-space knots and proving subadditivity in general.
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.
The purpose of this note is to show that classical cobordism arguments, which go back to the pioneering works of Mandelbaum and Moishezon, provide quick and unified proofs of any knot surgered compact simply-connected 4-manifold X_K becoming diffeomorphic to X after a single stabilization by connected summing with S^2 x S^2 or CP^2 # -CP^2, and almost complete decomposability of X_K for many almost completely decomposable X, such as the elliptic surfaces.
We introduce constructions of exact Lagrangian cobordisms with cylindrical Legendrian ends and study their invariants which arise from Symplectic Field Theory. A pair $(X,L)$ consisting of an exact symplectic manifold $X$ and an exact Lagrangian cobordism $L\subset X$ which agrees with cylinders over Legendrian links $Λ_+$ and $Λ_-$ at the positive and negative ends induces a differential graded algebra (DGA) map from the Legendrian contact homology DGA of $Λ_+$ to that of $Λ_-$. We give a gradient flow tree description of the DGA maps for certain pairs $(X,L)$, which in turn yields a purely c…
We give simple homological conditions for a rational homology 3-sphere Y to have infinite order in the rational homology cobordism group, and for a collection of rational homology spheres to be linearly independent. These translate immediately to statements about knot concordance when Y is the branched double cover of a knot, recovering some results of Livingston and Naik. The statements depend only on the homology groups of the 3-manifolds, but are proven through an analysis of correction terms and their behavior under connected sums.
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…
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…
We develop a theory of chain complex double-cobordism for chain complexes equipped with Poincaré duality. The resulting double-cobordism groups are a refinement of Ranicki's torsion algebraic $L$-groups for localisations of a commutative ring with involution. The refinement is analogous to the difference between metabolic and hyperbolic linking forms. We apply the double $L$-groups in high-dimensional knot theory to define an invariant for doubly-slice $n$-knots. We prove that the "stably doubly-slice implies doubly-slice" property holds (algebraically) for Blanchfield forms, Seifert forms and…
It is well-known that all 2-knots are slice. Are all 2-links slice? This is an outstanding open question. In this paper we prove the following: For any 2-component 2-link (J,K)in the 4-sphere which bounds the 5-ball B^5, there is an embedded disc 2-disc D^2_J (respectively, D^2_K) in B^5 with the following properties: J (respectively K) bounds D^2_J (respectively, D^2_K). D^2_J and D^2_K intersect transversely. the intersection of D^2_J and D^2_K in D^2_J (respectively, D^2_K) is a trivial 1-knot.
To a Legendrian knot, one can associate an $\mathcal{A}_{\infty}$ category, the augmentation category. An exact Lagrangian cobordism between two Legendrian knots gives a functor of the augmentation categories of the two knots. We study the functor and establish a long exact sequence relating the corresponding cohomology of morphisms of the two ends. As applications, we prove that the functor between augmentation categories is injective on the level of equivalence classes of objects and find new obstructions to the existence of exact Lagrangian cobordisms in terms of linearized contact homology…
Kronheimer and Mrowka introduced a new knot invariant, called $s^\sharp$, which is a gauge theoretic analogue of Rasmussen's $s$ invariant. In this article, we compute Kronheimer and Mrowka's invariant for some classes of knots, including algebraic knots and the connected sums of quasi-positive knots with non-trivial right handed torus knots. These computations reveal some unexpected phenomena: we show that $s^\sharp$ does not have to agree with $s$, and that $s^\sharp$ is not additive under connected sums of knots. Inspired by our computations, we separate the invariant $s^\sharp$ into two ne…
We investigate the ramifications of the Legendrian satellite construction on the relation of Lagrangian cobordism between Legendrian knots. Under a simple hypothesis, we construct a Lagrangian concordance between two Legendrian satellites by stacking up a sequence of elementary cobordisms. This construction narrows the search for "non-decomposable" Lagrangian cobordisms and yields new families of decomposable Lagrangian slice knots. Finally, we show that the maximum Thurston-Bennequin number of a smoothly slice knot provides an obstruction to any Legendrian satellite of that knot being Lagrang…
In 1987 S Cappell and J Shaneson constructed an s-cobordism H from the quaternionic 3-manifold Q to itself, and asked whether H or any of its covers are trivial product cobordism? In this paper we study H, and in particular show that its 8-fold cover is the product cobordism from S^3 to itself. We reduce the triviality of H to a question about the 3-twist spun trefoil knot in S^4, and also relate this to a question about a Fintushel-Stern knot surgery.
In this paper, we develop a geometric procedure for producing a reverse to Quillen's plus construction, a construction called a 1-sided h-cobordism or semi-h-cobordism. We then use this reverse to the plus construction to produce uncountably many distinct ends of manifolds called pseudo-collars, which are stackings of 1-sided h-cobordisms. Each of our pseudo-collars has the same boundary and pro-homology systems at infinity and similar group-theoretic properties for their pro-fundamental group systems at infinity. In particular, the kernel group of each group extension for each 1-sided h-cobor…
We consider manifold-knot pairs $(Y,K)$ where $Y$ is a homology sphere that bounds a homology ball. We show that the minimum genus of a PL surface $Σ$ in a homology ball $X$ such that $\partial (X, Σ) = (Y, K)$ can be arbitrarily large. Equivalently, the minimum genus of a surface cobordism in a homology cobordism from $(Y, K)$ to any knot in $S^3$ can be arbitrarily large. The proof relies on Heegaard Floer homology.
We give a fresh introduction to the Khovanov Homology theory for knots and links, with special emphasis on its extension to tangles, cobordisms and 2-knots. By staying within a world of topological pictures a little longer than in other articles on the subject, the required extension becomes essentially tautological. And then a simple application of an appropriate functor (a `TQFT') to our pictures takes them to the familiar realm of complexes of (graded) vector spaces and ordinary homological invariants.
