English

Squeezed Knots

Geometric Topology 2025-11-27 v2 Quantum Algebra

Abstract

Squeezed knots are those knots that appear as slices of genus-minimizing oriented smooth cobordisms between positive and negative torus knots. We show that this class of knots is large and discuss how to obstruct squeezedness. The most effective obstructions appear to come from quantum knot invariants, notably including refinements of the Rasmussen invariant due to Lipshitz-Sarkar and Sarkar-Scaduto-Stoffregen involving stable cohomology operations on Khovanov homology.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2202.12289,
  title  = {Squeezed Knots},
  author = {Peter Feller and Lukas Lewark and Andrew Lobb},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2202.12289},
  year   = {2025}
}

Comments

28 pages, 9 figures. v2: Minor restructuring. Corresponds to version accepted for publication by Quantum Topology

R2 v1 2026-06-24T09:52:53.461Z