English

The cosmetic crossing conjecture for split links

Geometric Topology 2023-02-01 v1

Abstract

Given a band sum of a split two-component link along a nontrivial band, we obtain a family of knots indexed by the integers by adding any number of full twists to the band. We show that the knots in this family have the same Heegaard knot Floer homology and the same instanton knot Floer homology. In contrast, a generalization of the cosmetic crossing conjecture predicts that the knots in this family are all distinct. We verify this prediction by showing that any two knots in this family have distinct Khovanov homology. Along the way, we prove that each of the three knot homologies detects the trivial band.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2006.01070,
  title  = {The cosmetic crossing conjecture for split links},
  author = {Joshua Wang},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2006.01070},
  year   = {2023}
}

Comments

89 pages, 16 figures

R2 v1 2026-06-23T15:58:04.188Z