Unknotting nonorientable surfaces
Abstract
Given a nonorientable, locally flatly embedded surface in the -sphere of nonorientable genus , Massey showed that the normal Euler number lies in . We prove that every such surface with knot group of order two is topologically unknotted, provided that the normal Euler number is not one of the extremal values in Massey's range. When is , , or , we prove the same holds even with extremal normal Euler number. We also study nonorientable embedded surfaces in the 4-ball with boundary a knot in the 3-sphere, again where the surface complement has fundamental group of order two and nonorientable genus . We prove that any two such surfaces with the same normal Euler number become topologically isotopic, rel. boundary, after adding a single tube to each. If the determinant of is trivial, we show that any two such surfaces are isotopic, rel. boundary, again provided that they have non-extremal normal Euler number, or that is , , or .
Cite
@article{arxiv.2306.12305,
title = {Unknotting nonorientable surfaces},
author = {Anthony Conway and Patrick Orson and Mark Powell},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2306.12305},
year = {2024}
}
Comments
63 pages. 2 figures. v2 implements suggestions of an anonymous referee. To appear in JEMS