Related papers: Positive Links
We construct new knot polynomials. Let $V$ be the standard solid torus in 3-space and let $pr$ be its standard projection onto an annulus. Let $M$ be the space of all smooth oriented knots in $V$ such that the restriction of $pr$ is an…
Suppose there are two framed links in a compact, connected 3-manifold (possibly with boundary, or non-orientable) such that the associated 3-manifolds obtained by surgery are homeomorphic (relative to their common boundary, if there is…
We extend several classical invariants of links in the 3-sphere to links in so-called quasi-cylinders. These invariants include the linking number, the Seifert form, the Alexander module, the Alexander-Conway polynomial and the…
The conormal Lagrangian $L_K$ of a knot $K$ in $\mathbb{R}^3$ is the submanifold of the cotangent bundle $T^* \mathbb{R}^3$ consisting of covectors along $K$ that annihilate tangent vectors to $K$. By intersecting with the unit cotangent…
If a knot K bounds a genus one Seifert surface F in the 3-sphere and F contains an essential simple closed curve alpha that has induced framing 0 and is smoothly slice, then K is smoothly slice. Conjecturally, the converse holds. It is…
Knot and link polynomials are topological invariants calculated from the expectation value of loop operators in topological field theories. In 3D Chern-Simons theory, these invariants can be found from crossing and braiding matrices of…
Let M be a closed, connected manifold, and LM its loop space. In this paper we describe closed string topology operations in h_*(LM), where h_* is a generalized homology theory that supports an orientation of M. We will show that these…
The purpose of this paper is to interpret polynomial invariants of strongly invertible links in terms of Khovanov homology theory. To a divide, that is a proper generic immersion of a finite number of copies of the unit interval and circles…
Building on Greene's changemaker lattices, we develop a lattice embedding obstruction to realizing an L-space bounding a definite 4-manifold as integer surgery on a knot in the Poincar\'e homology sphere. As the motivating application, we…
Fintushel and Stern have proved that if S \subset X is a symplectic surface in a symplectic 4-manifold such that S has simply-connected complement and nonnegative self-intersection, then there are infinitely many topologically equivalent…
Atiyah's formulation of what is nowadays called the convexity theorem of Atiyah-Guillemin-Sternberg has two parts: (a) the image of the moment map arising from a Hamiltonian action of a torus on a symplectic manifold is a convex polytope,…
A crucial step in the surgery-theoretic program to classify smooth manifolds is that of representing a middle--dimensional homology class by a smoothly embedded sphere. This step fails even for the simple 4-manifolds obtained from the…
We give a general surgery formula for the Casson-Walker-Lescop invariant of closed 3-manifolds, seen as the leading term of the LMO invariant, in a purely diagrammatic and combinatorial way. This provides a new viewpoint on a formula…
We investigate the line between tight and overtwisted for surgeries on fibred transverse knots in contact 3-manifolds. When the contact structure $\xi_K$ is supported by the fibred knot $K \subset M$, we obtain a characterisation of when…
A surgery on a knot in 3-sphere is called SU(2)-cyclic if it gives a manifold whose fundamental group has no non-cyclic SU(2) representations. Using holonomy perturbations on the Chern-Simons functional, we prove that the distance of two…
In an earlier paper, we used the absolute grading on Heegaard Floer homology to give restrictions on knots in $S^3$ which admit lens space surgeries. The aim of the present article is to exhibit stronger restrictions on such knots, arising…
We give an example of a 3-component smoothly slice boundary link, each of whose components has a genus one Seifert surface, such that any metaboliser of the boundary link Seifert form is represented by 3 curves on the Seifert surfaces that…
We show that a null-homologous transverse knot K in the complement of an overtwisted disk in a contact 3-manifold is the boundary of a Legendrian ribbon if and only if it possesses a Seifert surface S such that the self-linking number of K…
Given a representation of a link group, we introduce a trilinear form, as a topological invariant. We show that, if the link is either hyperbolic or a knot with malnormality, then the trilinear form equals the pairing of the (twisted)…
A theorem of Mumford states that, on complex surfaces, any normal isolated singularity whose link is diffeomorphic to a sphere is actually a smooth point. While this property fails in higher dimensions, McLean asks whether the contact…