Deep and shallow slice knots in 4-manifolds
Abstract
We consider slice disks for knots in the boundary of a smooth compact 4-manifold . We call a knot deep slice in if there is a smooth properly embedded 2-disk in with boundary , but is not concordant to the unknot in a collar neighborhood of the boundary. We point out how this concept relates to various well-known conjectures and give some criteria for the nonexistence of such deep slice knots. Then we show, using the Wall self-intersection invariant and a result of Rohlin, that every 4-manifold consisting of just one 0- and a nonzero number of 2-handles always has a deep slice knot in the boundary. We end by considering 4-manifolds where every knot in the boundary bounds an embedded disk in the interior. A generalization of the Murasugi-Tristram inequality is used to show that there does not exist a compact, oriented 4-manifold with spherical boundary such that every knot is slice in via a null-homologous disk.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.2009.03053,
title = {Deep and shallow slice knots in 4-manifolds},
author = {Michael Klug and Benjamin Ruppik},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2009.03053},
year = {2021}
}
Comments
14 pages, 5 figures; v3 is the final draft which has been accepted for publication in Proceedings of the AMS, Series B; v3 includes improvements to the exposition thanks to the anonymous referee