English

Brieskorn spheres bounding rational balls

Geometric Topology 2019-02-25 v1

Abstract

Fintushel and Stern showed that the Brieskorn sphere Σ(2,3,7)\Sigma(2,3,7) bounds a rational homology ball, while its non-trivial Rokhlin invariant obstructs it from bounding an integral homology ball. It is known that their argument can be modified to show that the figure-eight knot is rationally slice, and we use this fact to provide the first additional examples of Brieskorn spheres that bound rational homology balls but not integral homology balls: the families Σ(2,4n+1,12n+5)\Sigma(2,4n+1,12n+5) and Σ(3,3n+1,12n+5)\Sigma(3,3n+1,12n+5) for nn odd. We also provide handlebody diagrams for a rational homology ball containing a rationally slice disk for the figure-eight knot, as well as for a rational homology ball bounded by Σ(2,3,7)\Sigma(2,3,7). These handle diagrams necessarily contain 3-handles.

Cite

@article{arxiv.1704.07739,
  title  = {Brieskorn spheres bounding rational balls},
  author = {Selman Akbulut and Kyle Larson},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1704.07739},
  year   = {2019}
}

Comments

8 pages, 8 figures

R2 v1 2026-06-22T19:27:22.234Z