English

State Cycles, Quasipositive Modification, and Constructing H-thick Knots in Khovanov Homology

Geometric Topology 2009-06-09 v2

Abstract

We study Khovanov homology classes which have state cycle representatives, and examine how they interact with Jacobsson homomorphisms and Lee's map Φ\Phi. As an application, we describe a general procedure, quasipositive modification, for constructing H-thick knots in rational Khovanov homology. Moreover, we show that specific families of such knots cannot be detected by Khovanov's thickness criteria. We also exhibit a sequence of prime links related by quasipositive modification whose width is increasing.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.0901.4039,
  title  = {State Cycles, Quasipositive Modification, and Constructing H-thick Knots in Khovanov Homology},
  author = {Andrew Elliott},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:0901.4039},
  year   = {2009}
}

Comments

42 pages, color figures. Version 2 revisions: an error was corrected in Proposition 4.3, which requires a stronger hypothesis. This slightly widens the classification theorem of section 4, and has led to small revisions throughout. Theorem 4.7, which involved even all-1 state cycles, has been removed, as it has grown into a forthcoming paper

R2 v1 2026-06-21T12:04:43.153Z