English

Handle decompositions of rational balls and Casson-Gordon invariants

Geometric Topology 2017-11-27 v2

Abstract

Given a rational homology sphere which bounds rational homology balls, we investigate the complexity of these balls as measured by the number of 1-handles in a handle decomposition. We use Casson-Gordon invariants to obtain lower bounds which also lead to lower bounds on the fusion number of ribbon knots. We use Levine-Tristram signatures to compute these bounds and produce explicit examples.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1610.10032,
  title  = {Handle decompositions of rational balls and Casson-Gordon invariants},
  author = {Paolo Aceto and Marco Golla and Ana G. Lecuona},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1610.10032},
  year   = {2017}
}

Comments

12 pages, 1 figure. Updated version following referee's advice. Accepted for publication in Proceedings of the American Mathematical Society