English

Non-isotopic splitting spheres for a split link in $S^4$

Geometric Topology 2023-07-25 v1

Abstract

We show that there exist split, orientable, 2-component surface-links in S4S^4 with non-isotopic splitting spheres in their complements. In particular, for non-negative integers m,nm,n with m4m\ge 4, the unlink Lm,nL_{m,n} consisting of one component of genus mm and one component of genus nn contains in its complement two smooth splitting spheres that are not topologically isotopic in S4Lm,nS^4\setminus L_{m,n}. This contrasts with link theory in the classical dimension, as any two splitting spheres in the complement of a 2-component split link LS3L\subset S^3 are isotopic in S3LS^3\setminus L.

Cite

@article{arxiv.2307.12140,
  title  = {Non-isotopic splitting spheres for a split link in $S^4$},
  author = {Mark Hughes and Seungwon Kim and Maggie Miller},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2307.12140},
  year   = {2023}
}

Comments

14 pages with 7 figures. Comments welcome!

R2 v1 2026-06-28T11:37:45.226Z