English

Instanton 2-torsion and fibered knots

Geometric Topology 2026-01-01 v1 Differential Geometry

Abstract

We prove that the unreduced singular instanton homology I(Y,K;Z)I^\sharp(Y,K;\mathbb{Z}) has 22-torsion for any null-homologous fibered knot KK of genus g>0g>0 in a closed 33-manifold YY except for #2gS1×S2\#^{2g}S^1\times S^2. The main technical result is a formula of I(Y,K;C)I^\sharp(Y,K;\mathbb{C}) via sutured instanton theory, by which we can compare the dimensions of I(Y,K;F2)I^\sharp(Y,K;\mathbb{F}_2) and I(Y,K;C)I^\sharp(Y,K;\mathbb{C}). As a byproduct, we show that I(S3,K;C)I^\sharp(S^3,K;\mathbb{C}) for a knot KS3K\subset S^3 admitting lens space surgeries is determined by the Alexander polynomial, while some special cases of torus knots have been previously studied by many people. Another byproduct is that the next-to-top Alexander grading summand of instanton knot homology KHI(S3,K,g(K)1)KHI(S^3,K,g(K)-1) is non-vanishing when KK has unknotting number one, which generalizes the Baldwin--Sivek's result in the fibered case. Finally, we discuss the relation to the Heegaard Floer theory.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2512.24206,
  title  = {Instanton 2-torsion and fibered knots},
  author = {Deeparaj Bhat and Zhenkun Li and Fan Ye},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2512.24206},
  year   = {2026}
}

Comments

21 pages, 6 figures; Comments are welcome