We establish certain "non-triviality" results for several filtrations of the smooth and topological knot concordance groups. First, as regards the n-solvable filtration of the topological knot concordance group defined by K. Orr, P. Teichner and the first author, we refine the recent non-triviality results of Cochran and Teichner by including information on the Alexander modules. These results also extend those of C. Livingston and the second author. We exhibit similar structure in the closely related symmetric Grope filtration of the knot concordance group considered by the first author and Teichner. We also show that the Grope filtration of the smooth concordance group is non-trivial using examples that cannot be distinguished by the Ozsvath-Szabo tau invariant nor by J. Rasmussen's s-invariant. Our broader contribution is to establish, in "the relative case", the key homological results whose analogues Cochran-Orr-Teichner established in "the absolute case".
We say two knots K and J are concordant modulo n-solvability if K#(-J) is n-solvable. Our main result is that, for any knot K whose classical Alexander polynomial has degree greater than 2, and for any positive integer n, there exist infinitely many knots K_i that are concordant to K modulo n-solvability, but are all distinct modulo n.5-solvability. Moreover, the K_i and K share the same classical Seifert matrix and Alexander module as well as sharing the same higher-order Alexander modules and Seifert presentations up to order n-1.
J. Davis showed that the topological concordance class of a link in the 3-sphere is uniquely determined by its Alexander polynomial for 2-component links with Alexander polynomial one. A similar result for knots with Alexander polynomial one was shown earlier by M. Freedman. We prove that these two cases are the only exceptional cases, by showing that the link concordance class is not determined by the Alexander invariants in any other case.
We show that if a link J in the 3-sphere is homotopy ribbon concordant to a link L then the Alexander polynomial of L divides the Alexander polynomial of J.
In this paper we provide a new obstruction to 0-concordance of knotted surfaces in $S^4$ in terms of Alexander ideals. We use this to prove the existence of infinitely many linearly independent 0-concordance classes and to provide the first proof that the submonoid of 2-knots is not a group. The main result is that the Alexander ideal induces a homomorphism from the 0-concordance monoid $\mathscr{C}_0$ of oriented surface knots in $S^4$ to the ideal class monoid of $\mathbb{Z}[t^{\pm1}]$. Consequently, any surface knot with nonprincipal Alexander ideal is not 0-slice and in fact, not invertibl…
We establish homotopy ribbon concordance obstructions coming from the Blanchfield form and Levine-Tristram signatures. Then, as an application of twisted Alexander polynomials, we show that for every knot K with nontrivial Alexander polynomial, there exists an infinite family of knots that are all concordant to K and have the same Blanchfield form as K, such that no pair of knots in that family is homotopy ribbon concordant.
For a knot K, the concordance crosscap number, c(K), is the minimum crosscap number among all knots concordant to K. Building on work of G. Zhang, which studied the determinants of knots with c(K) < 2, we apply the Alexander polynomial to construct new algebraic obstructions to c(K) < 2. With the exception of low crossing number knots previously known to have c(K) < 2, the obstruction applies to all but four prime knots of 11 or fewer crossings.
We use the Bar-Natan Zh-correspondence to identify the generalized Alexander polynomial of a virtual knot with the Alexander polynomial of a two component welded link. We show that the Zh-map is functorial under concordance, and also that Satoh's Tube map (from welded links to ribbon knotted tori in $S^4$) is functorial under concordance. In addition, we extend classical results of Chen, Milnor, and Hillman on the lower central series of link groups to links in thickened surfaces. Our main result is that the generalized Alexander polynomial vanishes on any knot in a thickened surface which is …
The knot Floer complex together with the associated concordance invariant epsilon can be used to define a filtration on the smooth concordance group. We show that the indexing set of this filtration contains the natural numbers cross the integers as an ordered subset.
We define a filtration of the smooth concordance group based on the genus of representative knots. We use the Heegaard Floer epsilon and Upsilon invariants to prove the quotient groups with respect to this filtration are infinitely generated. Results are applied to three infinite families of topologically slice knots.
In 2016 Levine showed that there exists a knot in a homology 3-sphere which is not smoothly concordant to any knot in the 3-sphere where one allows concordances in any smooth homology cobordism. Whether the same is true if one allows topological concordances is not known. One might hope that such an example might be detected by the powerful filtration of knot concordance introduced by Cochran-Orr-Teichner. We prove that this is not the case, demonstrating that for any knot in any homology sphere there is a knot in the 3-sphere equivalent to the original knot modulo any term of this filtration.…
Various obstructions to knot concordance have been found using Casson-Gordon invariants, higher-order Alexander polynomials, as well as von-Neumann rho-invariants. Examples have been produced using (iterated) doubling operations K=R(c,J), and considering these as parametrized by invariants of the base knot J and doubling operator R. In this paper, we introduce a new mew method to obstruct concordance. We show that infinitely many distinct concordance classes may be constructed by varying the infecting curve c in S^3-R. Distinct concordance classes are found even while fixing the base knot, the…
We show that for each Seifert form of an algebraically slice knot with nontrivial Alexander polynomial, there exists an infinite family of knots having the Seifert form such that the knots are linearly independent in the knot concordance group and not concordant to any knot with coprime Alexander polynomial. Key ingredients for the proof are Cheeger-Gromov-von Neumann rho-invariants for amenable groups developed by Cha and Orr and polynomial splittings of metabelian rho-invariants.
We address the primary decomposition of the knot concordance group in terms of the solvable filtration and higher-order von Neumann $ρ$-invariants by Cochran, Orr, and Teichner. We show that for a nonnegative integer n, if the connected sum of two n-solvable knots with coprime Alexander polynomials is slice, then each of the knots has vanishing von Neumann $ρ$-invariants of order n. This gives positive evidence for the conjecture that nonslice knots with coprime Alexander polynomials are not concordant. As an application, we show that if K is one of Cochran-Orr-Teichner's knots which are the f…
For all n > 0 there is a homomorphism from the smooth concordance group of knots in dimension 2n + 1 to an algebraically defined group called the rational algebraic concordance group. This algebraic concordance group splits as a direct sum of groups indexed by polynomials. For n > 1 the homomorphism is injective. This leads to what is called a primary decomposition theorem for knot concordance. In the classical dimension, the kernel of this homomorphism includes the smooth concordance group of topologically slice knots, and Jae Choon Cha has begun studying possible primary decompositions of th…
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…
We establish several new results about both the (n)-solvable filtration, F_n^m, of the set of link concordance classes and the (n)-solvable filtration of the string link concordance group. We first establish a relationship between Milnor's invariants and links, L, with certain restrictions on the 4-manifold bounded by M_L. Using this relationship, we can relate (n)-solvability of a link (or string link) with its Milnor's invariants. Specifically, we show that if a link is (n)-solvable, then its Milnor's invariants vanish for lengths up to 2^{n+2}-1. Previously, there were no known results abou…
The knot Floer complex and the concordance invariant $\varepsilon$ can be used to define a filtration on the smooth concordance group. We exhibit an ordered subset of this filtration that is isomorphic to $\mathbb{N} \times \mathbb{N}$ and consists of topologically slice knots.
It was shown by Jim Davis that a 2-component link with Alexander polynomial one is topologically concordant to the Hopf link. In this paper, we show that there is a 2-component link with Alexander polynomial one that has unknotted components and is not smoothly concordant to the Hopf link, answering a question of Jim Davis. We construct infinitely many concordance classes of such links, and show that they have the stronger property of not being smoothly concordant to the Hopf link with knots tied in the components.
We consider the Grope filtration of the classical knot concordance group that was introduced in a paper of Cochran, Orr and Teichner. Our main result is that successive quotients at each stage in this filtration have infinite rank. We also establish the analogous result for the Grope filtration of the concordance group of string links consisting of more than one component.
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, …
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 that the Artin representation on concordance classes of string links induces a well-defined epimorphism modulo order n twisted Whitney tower concordance, and that the kernel of this map is generated by band sums of iterated Bing-doubles of any string knot with nonzero Arf invariant. We also continue J. Levine's work [20, 21, 22] comparing two filtrations of the group of homology cobordism classes of 3-dimensional homology cylinders, one defined in terms of an Artin-type representation (the Johnson filtration) and one defined using clasper surgery (the Goussarov-Habiro filtration). In p…
A polynomial f(t) with rational coefficients is strongly irreducible if f(t^k) is irreducible for all positive integers k. Likewise, two polynomials f and g are strongly coprime if f(t^k) and g(t^l) are relatively prime for all positive integers k and l. We provide some sufficient conditions for strong irreducibility and prove that the Alexander polynomials of twist knots are pairwise strongly coprime and that most of them are strongly irreducible. We apply these results to describe the structure of the subgroup of the rational knot concordance group generated by the twist knots and to provide…
It is known that each of the successive quotient groups of the grope and solvable filtrations of the knot concordance group has an infinite rank subgroup. The generating knots of these subgroups are constructed using iterated doubling operators. In this paper, for each of the successive quotients of the filtrations we give a new infinite rank subgroup which trivially intersects the previously known infinite rank subgroups. Instead of iterated doubling operators, the generating knots of these new subgroups are constructed using the notion of algebraic $n$-solutions, which was introduced by Coch…
We propose and analyze a structure with which to organize the difference between a knot in the 3-sphere bounding a topologically embedded 2-disk in the 4-ball and it bounding a smoothly embedded disk. The n-solvable filtration of the topological knot concordance group, due to Cochran-Orr-Teichner, may be complete in the sense that any knot in the intersection of its terms may well be topologically slice. However, the natural extension of this filtration to what is called the n-solvable filtration of the smooth knot concordance group, is unsatisfactory because any topologically slice knot lies …
We prove that many pretzel knots of the form $P(2n,m,-2n\pm1,-m)$ are not topologically slice, even though their positive mutants $P(2n, -2n\pm1, m, -m)$ are ribbon. We use the sliceness obstruction of Kirk and Livingston related to the twisted Alexander polynomials associated to prime power cyclic covers of knots.
The concordance genus of a knot K is the minimum three-genus among all knots concordant to K. For prime knots of 10 or fewer crossings there have been three knots for which the concordance genus was unknown. Those three cases are now resolved. Two of the cases are settled using invariants of Levine's algebraic concordance group. The last case depends on the use of twisted Alexander polynomials, viewed as Casson-Gordon invariants.
We show that the difference between the topological 4-genus of a knot and the minimal genus of a surface bounded by that knot that can be decomposed into a smooth concordance followed by an algebraically simple locally flat surface can be arbitrarily large. This extends work of Hedden-Livingston-Ruberman showing that there are topologically slice knots which are not smoothly concordant to any knot with trivial Alexander polynomial.
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 show that a decorated knot concordance $\mathcal{C}$ from $K_0$ to $K_1$ induces an $\mathbb{F}[U]$-module homomorphism \[G_{\mathcal{C}}: HFK^{-}(-S^3,K_0) \to HFK^{-}(-S^3,K_1)\] which preserves the Alexander and absolute $\mathbb{Z}_2$-Maslov gradings. Our construction generalizes the concordance maps induced on $\widehat{HFK}$ studied by Juhász and Marengon, but uses the description of $HFK^{-}$ as a direct limit of maps between sutured Floer homology groups discovered by Etnyre, Vela-Vick, and Zarev.
For any group G, we define a new characteristic series related to the derived series, that we call the torsion-free derived series of G. Using this series and the Cheeger-Gromov rho-invariant, we obtain new real-valued homology cobordism invariants rho_n for closed (4k-1)-dimensional manifolds. For 3-dimensional manifolds, we show that {rho_n} is a linearly independent set and for each n, the image of rho_n is an infinitely generated and dense subset of R. In their seminal work on knot concordance, T. Cochran, K. Orr, and P. Teichner define a filtration F_(n)^m of the m-component (string) link…
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…
We use the Blanchfield form to obtain a lower bound on the equivariant slice genus of a strongly invertible knot. For our main application, let $K$ be a genus one strongly invertible slice knot with nontrivial Alexander polynomial. We show that the equivariant slice genus of an equivariant connected sum $\#^n K$ is at least $n/4$. We also formulate an equivariant algebraic concordance group, and show that the kernel of the forgetful map to the classical algebraic concordance group is infinite rank.
Let C_T be the subgroup of the smooth knot concordance group generated by topologically slice knots and let C_D be the subgroup generated by knots with trivial Alexander polynomial. We prove the quotient C_T/C_D is infinitely generated, and uncover similar structure in the 3-dimensional rational spin bordism group. Our methods also lead to the construction of links that are topologically, but not smoothly, concordant to boundary links.
We employ Hirzebruch-type invariants obtained from iterated p-covers to investigate concordance of links and string links. We show that the invariants naturally give various group homomorphisms of the string link concordance group into L-groups over number fields. We also obtain homomorphisms of successive quotients of the Cochran-Orr-Teichner filtration. As an application we show that the kernel of Harvey's $ρ_n$-invariant is large enough to contain a subgroup with infinite rank abelianization, modulo local knots. As another application, we show that recently discovered nontrivial 2-torsion e…
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…
The existence of topologically slice knots that are of infinite order in the knot concordance group followed from Freedman's work on topological surgery and Donaldson's gauge theoretic approach to 4-manifolds. Here, as an application of Ozsvath and Szabo's Heegaard-Floer theory, we show the existence of an infinite subgroup of the smooth concordance group generated by topologically slice knots of concordance order two. In addition, no nontrivial element in this subgroup can be represented by a knot with Alexander polynomial one.
In 1997 Cochran-Orr-Teichner introduced a natural filtration, called the n-solvable filtration, of the smooth knot concordance group, C. Its terms {F_n} are indexed by half integers. We show that each associated graded abelian group G_n=F_n/F_{n.5}, n>1, contains infinite linearly independent sets of elements of order 2 (this was known previously for n=0,1). Each of the representative knots is negative amphichiral, with vanishing s-invariant, tau-invariant, delta-invariants and Casson-Gordon invariants. Moreover each is smoothly slice in a rational homology 4-ball. In fact we show that there a…
We show that there exists a $\mathbb{Z}^\infty$-summand in the subgroup of the knot concordance group generated by knots with trivial Alexander polynomial. To this end we use the invariant Upsilon $Υ$ recently introduced by Ozsváth, Stipsicz and Szabó using knot Floer homology. We partially compute $Υ$ of $(n,1)$-cable of the Whitehead double of the trefoil knot. For this computation of $Υ$, we determine a sufficient condition for two satellite knots to have identical $Υ$ for any pattern with nonzero winding number.
We define an algebraic group comprising symmetric chain complexes which captures the first two stages of the Cochran-Orr-Teichner solvable filtration of the knot concordance group in a single obstruction. To achieve this we impose additional structure on each chain complex which puts extra control on the fundamental groups, and in particular on the way in which they can change in a concordance.
The concordance orders of many algebraic order two knots of ten or fewer crossings have been heretofore unknown. We use Casson-Gordon invariants and twisted Alexander polynomials to find that, in all but one case, these knots do not have concordance order two. We also find that a certain family of algebraic order two twisted doubles of the unknot have infinite concordance order.
Ozsvath and Szabo have defined a knot concordance invariant tau that bounds the 4-ball genus of a knot. Here we discuss shortcuts to its computation. We include examples of Alexander polynomial one knots for which the invariant is nontrivial, including all iterated untwisted positive doubles of knots with nonnegative Thurston-Bennequin number, such as the trefoil, and explicit computations for several 10 crossing knots. We also note that a new proof of the Slice-Bennequin Inequality quickly follows from these techniques.
The bipolar filtration introduced by T. Cochran, S. Harvey, and P. Horn is a framework for the study of smooth concordance of topologically slice knots and links. It is known that there are topologically slice 1-bipolar knots which are not 2-bipolar. For knots, this is the highest known level at which the filtration does not stabilize. For the case of links with two or more components, we prove that the filtration does not stabilize at any level: for any n, there are topologically slice links which are n-bipolar but not (n+1)-bipolar. In the proof we describe an explicit geometric construction…
This is survey about the classical knot concordance group, prepared for an upcoming handbook of knot theory. Topics include: the basic definitions of concordance; the theory of algebraic concordance as developed by Levine; the theory of Casson-Gordon invariants; applications of topological surgery as developed by Freedman; smooth results based on differential geometric techniques such as those of Donaldson; the filtration of the concordance group as developed by Cochran, Orr, and Teichner; and relations to classical 3-dimensional knot theory. There is also a short problem list.
We prove that if the order of the first homology of the 2-fold branched cover of a knot K in the 3-sphere is given by pm where p is a prime congruent to 3 mod 4 and gcd(p,m) =1, then K is of infinite order in the knot concordance group. This provides an obstruction to classical knots being of order 4. In particular, there are 11 prime knots with 10 or fewer crossings that are of order 4 in the algebraic concordance group; all are infinite order in concordance. Another corollary states that any knot with Alexander polynomial 5t^2 - 11t + 5 is of infinite order in concordance; Levine proved that…
We define a filtration on the vector space spanned by Seifert matrices of knots related to Vassiliev's filtration on the space of knots. Further we show that the invariants of knots derived from the filtration can be expressed by coefficients of the Alexander polynomial.
A knot in the 3-sphere is called doubly slice if it is a slice of an unknotted 2-sphere in the 4-sphere. We give a bi-sequence of new obstructions for a knot being doubly slice. We construct it following the idea of Cochran-Orr-Teichner's filtration of the classical knot concordance group. This yields a bi-filtration of the monoid of knots (under the connected sum operation) indexed by pairs of half integers. Doubly slice knots lie in the intersection of this bi-filtration. We construct examples of knots which illustrate non-triviality of this bi-filtration at all levels. In particular, these …
This thesis develops some general calculational techniques for finding the orders of knots in the topological concordance group C. The techniques currently available in the literature are either too theoretical, applying to only a small number of knots, or are designed to only deal with a specific knot. The thesis builds on the results of Herald, Kirk and Livingston [HKL10] and Tamulis [Tam02] to give a series of criteria, using twisted Alexander polynomials, for determining whether a knot is of infinite order in C. There are two immediate applications of these theorems. The first is to give t…
We construct an infinite family of topologically slice knots that are not smoothly concordant to their reverses. More precisely, if T denotes the concordance group of topologically slice knots and R is the involution of T induced by string reversal, then T/Fix(R) contains an infinitely generated free subgroup. The result remains true modulo the subgroup of T generated by knots with trivial Alexander polynomial.
The twisted torsion of a 3-manifold is well-known to be zero whenever the corresponding twisted Alexander module is non-torsion. Under mild extra assumptions we introduce a new twisted torsion invariant which is always non-zero. We show how this torsion invariant relates to the twisted intersection form of a bounding 4-manifold, generalizing a theorem of Milnor. Using this result, we give new obstructions to 3-manifolds being homology cobordant and to links being concordant. These obstructions are sufficiently strong to detect that the Bing double of the figure eight knot is not slice.
In 1997, T. Cochran, K. Orr, and P. Teichner defined a filtration {F_n} of the classical knot concordance group C. The filtration is important because of its strong connection to the classification of topological 4-manifolds. Here we introduce new techniques for studying C and use them to prove that, for each natural number n, the abelian group F_n/F_{n.5} has infinite rank. We establish the same result for the corresponding filtration of the smooth concordance group. We also resolve a long-standing question as to whether certain natural families of knots, first considered by Casson-Gordon and…
The concordance crosscap number $γ_c(K)$ of a knot $K$ is the smallest crosscap number $γ_3(K')$ of any knot $K'$ concordant to $K$ (and with $γ_3(K')$ defined as the least first Betti number of any nonorientable surface $Σ$ embedded in $S^3$ with boundary $K'$). This invariant has been introduced and studied by Zhang using knot determinants and signatures, and has further been studied by Livingston using the Alexander polynomial. We show in this work that the rational Witt class of a knot can be used to obtain a lower bound on the concordance crosscap number, by means of a new integer-valued …
We define an algebraic group comprising symmetric chain complexes which captures the first two stages of the Cochran-Orr-Teichner solvable filtration of the knot concordance group in a single invariant. To achieve this we impose additional structure on each chain complex which puts extra control on the fundamental groups, and in particular on the way in which they can change in a concordance.
Let T denote the group of smooth concordance classes of topologically sice knots. We show that the first quotient in the bipolar filtration of T (i.e. 0-bipolar knots modulo 1-bipolar knots) has infinite rank, even modulo Alexander polynomial one knots. Any 0-bipolar knot has vanishing tau-, epsilon-, and s-invariants. We prove the result using d-invariants associated to the 2-fold branched covers of knot complements.
Let $\mathcal{T}$ be the group of smooth concordance classes of topologically slice knots, and $\{0\}\subset\cdots\subset \mathcal{T}_{n+1}\subset\mathcal{T}_{n}\subset \cdots\subset \mathcal{T}_{0}\subset \mathcal{T}$ be the bipolar filtration. In this paper, we show that a proper collection of the knots employed by Hedden, Kim, and Livingston to prove $\mathbb{Z}_2^{\infty} < \mathcal{T}$ can be used to see $\mathbb{Z}_2^{\infty} < \mathcal{T}_0/\mathcal{T}_1$.
By a recent result of Livingston, it is known that if a knot has a prime power branched cyclic cover that is not a homology sphere, then there is an infinite family of non-concordant knots having the same Seifert form as the knot. In this paper, we extend this result to the full extent. We show that if the knot has nontrivial Alexander polynomial, then there exists an infinite family of non-concordant knots having the same Seifert form as the knot. As a corollary, no nontrivial Alexander polynomial determines a unique knot concordance class. We use Cochran-Orr-Teichner's recent result on the k…
We examine the Johnson filtration of the (outer) automorphism group of a finitely generated group. In the case of a free group, we find a surprising result: the first Betti number of the second subgroup in the Johnson filtration is finite. Moreover, the corresponding Alexander invariant is a non-trivial module over the Laurent polynomial ring. In the process, we show that the first resonance variety of the outer Torelli group of a free group is trivial. We also establish a general relationship between the Alexander invariant and its infinitesimal counterpart.
For each sequence of polynomials, P=(p_1(t),p_2(t),...), we define a characteristic series of groups, called the derived series localized at P. Given a knot K in S^3, such a sequence of polynomials arises naturally as the orders of certain submodules of the sequence of higher-order Alexander modules of K. These group series yield new filtrations of the knot concordance group that refine the (n)-solvable filtration of Cochran-Orr-Teichner. We show that the quotients of successive terms of these refined filtrations have infinite rank. These results also suggest higher-order analogues of the p(t)…
