English

On Handlebody Structures of Rational Balls

Geometric Topology 2014-06-09 v1

Abstract

It is known that for coprime integers p>q1p>q\geq 1, the lens space L(p2,pq1)L(p^2,pq-1) bounds a rational ball, Bp,qB_{p,q}, arising as the 2-fold branched cover of a (smooth) slice disk in B4B^4 bounding the associated 2-bridge knot. Lekilli and Maydanskiy give handle decompositions for each Bp,qB_{p,q}. Whereas, Yamada gives an alternative definition of rational balls, Am,nA_{m,n}, bounding L(p2,pq1)L(p^2,pq-1) by their handlebody decompositions alone. We show that these two families coincide - answering a question of Kadokami and Yamada. To that end, we show that each Am,nA_{m,n} admits a Stein filling of the "standard" contact structure, ξˉst\bar{\xi}_{st}, on L(p2,pq1)L(p^2,pq-1) investigated by Lisca.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1406.1575,
  title  = {On Handlebody Structures of Rational Balls},
  author = {Luke Williams},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1406.1575},
  year   = {2014}
}

Comments

21 pages, 24 figures

R2 v1 2026-06-22T04:32:16.942Z