Related papers: Pairs of boundary slopes with small differences

The doubly slice genus of a knot in the 3-sphere is the minimal genus among unknotted orientable surfaces in the 4-sphere for which the knot arises as a cross-section. We use the classical signature function of the knot to give a new lower…

It is shown that given a set of $N$ points in the plane or on the sphere, there is a subset of size $\gtrsim N^{1/3}/\log N$ with all pairwise distances between points distinct.

We introduce a new real-valued invariant called the natural slope of a hyperbolic knot in the 3-sphere, which is defined in terms of its cusp geometry. We show that twice the knot signature and the natural slope differ by at most a constant…

Kirby and Lickorish showed that every knot in the 3-sphere is concordant to a prime knot, equivalently, every concordance class contains a prime knot. We prove here that their result can be strengthened: Every knot in the 3-sphere is…

We prove that there exists a metric of positive curvature in a three-sphere which admits a given torus knot as a closed geodesic.We also sketch a construction of a metric in a four sphere, very likely of positive curvature, which admits a…

We show that there exists an infinite family of knots, each of which has, for each integer k>=0, a destabilized (2k+5)-bridge sphere. We also show that, for each integer n>=4, there exists a knot with a destabilized 3-bridge sphere and a…

In this article we study a partial ordering on knots in the 3-sphere where K_1 is greater than or equal to K_2 if there is an epimorphism from the knot group of K_1 onto the knot group of K_2 which preserves peripheral structure. If K_1 is…

Garoufalidis conjectured a relation between the boundary slopes of a knot and its colored Jones polynomials. According to the conjecture, certain boundary slopes are detected by the sequence of degrees of the colored Jones polynomials. We…

For a hyperbolic knot in $S^3$, Dehn surgery along slope $r \in \Q \cup \{\frac10\}$ is {\em exceptional} if it results in a non-hyperbolic manifold. We say meridional surgery, $r = \frac10$, is {\em trivial} as it recovers the manifold…

It is shown that the diameter of the boundary slope set is bounded from above by the twice of the minimal crossing number for a Montesinos knot.

We study compact orientable essential surfaces in knot exteriors in the 3-sphere. The genus $g$, the number of boundary components $b$, and the boundary slope $p/q$ are fundamental invariants of an essential surface. The \textit{realization…

Given a knot in a closed connected orientable 3-manifold we prove that if the exterior of the knot admits an aperiodic contact form that is Euclidean near the boundary, then the 3-manifold is diffeomorphic to the 3-sphere and the knot is…

Let X be a norm curve in the SL(2,C)-character variety of a knot exterior M. Let t = || b || / || a || be the ratio of the Culler-Shalen norms of two distinct non-zero classes a, b in H_1(\partial M, Z). We demonstrate that either X has…

Given a simply-connected 4-manifold with boundary the 3-sphere, this paper establishes sufficient conditions for a knot in the boundary to be sliced by a locally flat disc in the 4-manifold, whose complement has finite cyclic fundamental…

We give the first examples of a pair of knots $K_1$,$K_2$ in the 3-sphere for which their unknotting numbers satisfy $u(K_1\#K_2)<u(K_1)+u(K_2)$ . This answers question 1.69(B) from Kirby's problem list, "Problems in low-dimensional…

A diagonal surface in a link exterior M is a properly embedded, incompressible, boundary incompressible surface which furthermore has the same number of boundary components and same slope on each component of the boundary of M. We derive a…

We compare two naturally arising notions of unknotting number for 2-spheres in the 4-sphere: namely, the minimal number of 1-handle stabilizations needed to obtain an unknotted surface, and the minimal number of Whitney moves required in a…

Any 2-bridge knot in the 3-sphere has a bridge sphere from which any other bridge surface can be obtained by stabilization, meridional stabilization, perturbation and proper isotopy.

This paper presents some finiteness results for the number of boundary slopes of immersed essential surfaces of given genus g in a compact 3-manifold with torus boundary. In the case of hyperbolic 3-manifolds we obtain uniform quadratic…

We show that the problem of deciding whether a knot in a fixed closed orientable 3-dimensional manifold bounds a surface of genus at most $g$ is in co-NP. This answers a question of Agol, Hass, and Thurston in 2002. Previously, this was…