Related papers: "Slicing" the Hopf link
We are interested in contractible n-manifolds M which "split" as M = A union B where A,B, and A intersect B are all homeomorphic to Euclidean n-space (such M are called open n-splitters) or A,B, and A intersect B are all homeomorphic to the…
An invariant of orientable 3-manifolds is defined by taking the minimum $n$ such that a given 3-manifold embeds in the connected sum of $n$ copies of $S^2 \times S^2$, and we call this $n$ the embedding number of the 3-manifold. We give…
Given a real, symmetric matrix S, we define the slice through S as being the connected component containing S of two orbits under conjugation: the first by the orthogonal group, and the second by the upper triangular group. We describe some…
Fix an integer m and a multi-index p = (p_1, ..., p_r) of integers p_i < m-2. The set of links of codimension > 2, with multi-index p, E(p, m), is the set of smooth isotopy classes of smooth embeddings of the disjoint union of the…
Triple linking numbers were defined for 3-component oriented surface-links in 4-space using signed triple points on projections in 3-space. In this paper we give an algebraic formulation using intersections of homology classes (or cup…
A divide is the image of a proper and generic immersion of a compact $1$-manifold into the $2$-disk. Due to A'Campo's theory, each divide is associated with a link in the 3-sphere. In this paper, we reveal a hidden hyperbolic structure in…
We give new examples of 2-component links with linking number one and unknotted components that are topologically concordant to the positive Hopf link, but not smoothly so - in fact they are not smoothly concordant to the positive Hopf link…
Any knot in $S^3$ may be reduced to a slice knot by crossing changes. Indeed, this slice knot can be taken to be the unknot. In this paper we study the question of when the same holds for knots in homology spheres. We show that a knot in a…
In this paper we study isotopy classes of closed connected orientable surfaces in the standard $3$-sphere. Such a surface splits the $3$-sphere into two compact connected submanifolds, and by using their Heegaard splittings, we obtain a…
A knot in $S^3$ is rationally slice if it bounds a disk in a rational homology ball. We give an infinite family of rationally slice knots that are linearly independent in the knot concordance group. In particular, our examples are all…
We show that every good boundary link with a pair of derivative links on a Seifert surface satisfying a homotopically trivial plus assumption is freely slice. This subsumes all previously known methods for freely slicing good boundary links…
In the course of our work on low-volume hyperbolic 3-manifolds, we came upon a linking problem for horoball necklaces in $\mathbb{H}^3$. A horoball necklace is a collection of sequentially tangent beards (i.e. spheres) with disjoint…
We give a new geometric obstruction to the iterated Bing double of a knot being a slice link: for n>1 the (n+1)-st iterated Bing double of a knot is rationally slice if and only if the n-th iterated Bing double of the knot is rationally…
While the problem of computing the genus of a knot is now fairly well understood, no algorithm is known for its four-dimensional variants, both in the smooth and in the topological locally flat category. In this article, we investigate a…
Let $M$ be a connected, closed, oriented three-manifold and $K$, $L$ two rationally null-homologous oriented simple closed curves in $M$. We give an explicit algorithm for computing the linking number between $K$ and $L$ in terms of a…
Let $\D$ be a set of $n$ pairwise disjoint unit balls in $\R^d$ and $P$ the set of their center points. A hyperplane $\Hy$ is an \emph{$m$-separator} for $\D$ if each closed halfspace bounded by $\Hy$ contains at least $m$ points from $P$.…
This paper investigates the exotic phenomena exhibited by links of disconnected surfaces with boundary that are properly embedded in the 4-ball. Our main results provide two different constructions of exotic pairs of surface links that are…
A decomposition of a graph is a set of subgraphs whose edges partition those of $G$. The 3-decomposition conjecture posed by Hoffmann-Ostenhof in 2011 states that every connected cubic graph can be decomposed into a spanning tree, a…
We propose and analyze a structure with which to organize the difference between a knot in the 3-sphere bounding a topologically embedded 2-disk in the 4-ball and it bounding a smoothly embedded disk. The n-solvable filtration of the…
A multisection, or $n$-section, of an $(n + 1)$-dimensional manifold is a decomposition of this manifold into $n$ $1$-handlebodies of dimension $n+1$, such that all these handlebodies intersect along a closed surface, and every…