Related papers: The slice-ribbon conjecture for 3-stranded pretzel…

A pretzel knot $K$ is called $odd$ if all its twist parameters are odd, and $mutant$ $ribbon$ if it is mutant to a simple ribbon knot. We prove that the family of odd, 5-stranded pretzel knots satisfies a weaker version of the Slice-Ribbon…

Greene-Jabuka and Lecuona confirmed the slice-ribbon conjecture for 3-stranded pretzel knots except for an infinite family $P(a,-a-2,-\frac{(a+1)^2}{2})$ where $a$ is an odd integer greater than $1$. Lecuona and Miller showed that…

We give a complete characterization of the topological slice status of odd 3-strand pretzel knots, proving that an odd 3-strand pretzel knot is topologically slice if and only if either it is ribbon or has trivial Alexander polynomial. (By…

Let p and q be distinct integers greater than one. We show that the 2-component pretzel link P(p,q,-p,-q) is not slice, even though it has a ribbon mutant, by using 3-fold branched covers and an obstruction based on Donaldson's…

We provide a partial classification of the 3-strand pretzel knots $K = P(p,q,r)$ with unknotting number one. Following the classification by Kobayashi and Scharlemann-Thompson for all parameters odd, we treat the remaining families with $r$…

We give a necessary, and in some cases sufficient, condition for sliceness inside the family of pretzel knots $P (p_1,...,p_n)$ with one $p_i$ even. The three stranded case yields two interesting families of examples: the first consists of…

We prove that an infinite family of three-strand pretzel knots is not squeezed. In particular, we show that $P(4, -3, 5)$ is not squeezed. This answers a question posed by Lewark (2024). Our proof is obtained by comparing the Rasmussen…

We study 3-braid knots of finite smooth concordance order. A corollary of our main result is that a chiral 3-braid knot of finite concordance order is ribbon.

We establish the slice-ribbon conjecture for a large family of Montesinos' knots by means of Donaldson's theorem on the intersection forms of definite 4-manifolds.

We classify fibered ribbon pretzel knots up to mutation. The classification is complete, except perhaps for members of Lecuona's ``exceptional'' family of [Lec15]. The result is obtained by combining lattice embedding techniques with…

We prove that many pretzel knots of the form $P(2n,m,-2n\pm1,-m)$ are not topologically slice, even though their positive mutants $P(2n, -2n\pm1, m, -m)$ are ribbon. We use the sliceness obstruction of Kirk and Livingston related to the…

We compute the unknotting number of two infinite families of pretzel knots, $P(3,1,\dots,1,b)$ (with $b$ positive and odd and an odd number of 1s) and $P(3,3,3c)$ (with $c$ positive and odd). To do this, we extend a technique of Owens using…

We give a criterion for distinguishing a prime knot $K$ in $S^3$ from every other knot in $S^3$ using the finite quotients of $\pi_1(S^3\setminus K)$. Using recent work of Baldwin-Sivek, we apply this criterion to the hyperbolic knots…

We study q-holonomic sequences that arise as the colored Jones polynomial of knots in 3-space. The minimal-order recurrence for such a sequence is called the (non-commutative) A-polynomial of a knot. Using the "method of guessing", we…

There are 352.2 million prime knots in the 3-sphere with at most 19 crossings. We study which of these knots are slice, in both the smooth and topological categories. While no algorithm is known for deciding whether a given knot is slice in…

In the present paper, we will show that a $(p,q,r)$-pretzel knot has the representativity 3 if and only if $(p,q,r)$ is either $\pm(-2,3,3)$ or $\pm(-2,3,5)$. We also show that a large algebraic knot has the representativity less than or…

In this paper, we compute the Khovanov homology over \Q for (p,-p,q) pretzel knots for odd values of p from 3 to 15 and arbitrarily large q. We provide a conjecture for the general form of the Khovanov homology of (p,-p,q) pretzel knots.…

In this note we show that ribbon concordance forms a partial ordering on the set of knots, answering a question of Gordon. The proof makes use of representation varieties of the knot groups to $SO(N)$ and relations between them induced by a…

Agol proved that ribbon concordance forms a partial ordering on the set of knots in the $3$-sphere. In this paper, we prove that all tight fibered knots are minimal in this partially ordered set. We also give the table of prime minimal…

We give a new construction of slice knots via annulus twists. The simplest slice knots obtained by our method are those constructed by Omae. In this paper, we introduce a sufficient condition for given slice knots to be ribbon, and prove…