English

On definite strongly quasipositive links and L-space branched covers

Geometric Topology 2019-10-08 v2

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 δn=σ1σ2σn1\delta_n = \sigma_1 \sigma_2 \ldots \sigma_{n-1} is the dual Garside element and b=δnkPBnb = \delta_n^k P \in B_n is a strongly quasipositive braid whose braid closure b^\widehat b is definite, then k2k \geq 2 implies that b^\widehat b is one of the torus links T(2,q),T(3,4),T(3,5)T(2, q), T(3,4), T(3,5) or pretzel links P(2,2,m),P(2,3,4)P(-2, 2, m), P(-2,3,4). Applying Theorem 1.1 of our previous paper we deduce that if one of the standard cyclic branched covers of b^\widehat b is an L-space, then b^\widehat b is one of these links. We show by example that there are strongly quasipositive braids δnP\delta_n P whose closures are definite but not one of these torus or pretzel links. We also determine the family of definite strongly quasipositive 33-braids and show that their closures coincide with the family of strongly quasipositive 33-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