On definite strongly quasipositive links and L-space branched covers
Abstract
We investigate the problem of characterising the family of strongly quasipositive links which have definite symmetrised Seifert forms and apply our results to the problem of determining when such a link can have an L-space cyclic branched cover. In particular, we show that if is the dual Garside element and is a strongly quasipositive braid whose braid closure is definite, then implies that is one of the torus links or pretzel links . Applying Theorem 1.1 of our previous paper we deduce that if one of the standard cyclic branched covers of is an L-space, then is one of these links. We show by example that there are strongly quasipositive braids whose closures are definite but not one of these torus or pretzel links. We also determine the family of definite strongly quasipositive -braids and show that their closures coincide with the family of strongly quasipositive -braids with an L-space branched cover.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.1811.08862,
title = {On definite strongly quasipositive links and L-space branched covers},
author = {Michel Boileau and Steven Boyer and Cameron McA. Gordon},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1811.08862},
year = {2019}
}
Comments
62 pages, minor revisions, accepted for publication in Adv. Math