Related papers: Infinitely many knots admitting the same integer s…

It is known that any contact 3-manifold can be obtained by rational contact Dehn surgery along a Legendrian link L in the standard tight contact 3-sphere. We define and study various versions of contact surgery numbers, the minimal number…

We investigate several conjectures in geometric topology by assembling computer data obtained by studying weaving knots, a doubly infinite family $W(p,n)$ of examples of hyperbolic knots. In particular, we compute some important polynomial…

In this paper we describe braid equivalence for knots and links in a 3-manifold $M$ obtained by rational surgery along a framed link in $S^3$. We first prove a sharpened version of the Reidemeister theorem for links in $M$. We then give…

Boyer, Gordon, and Watson have conjectured that an irreducible rational homology 3-sphere is an L-space if and only if its fundamental group is not left-orderable. Since Dehn surgeries on knots in $S^3$ can produce large families of…

Consider a dihedral cover $f: Y\to X$ with $X$ and $Y$ four-manifolds and $f$ branched along an oriented surface embedded in $X$ with isolated cone singularities. We prove that only a slice knot can arise as the unique singularity on an…

In two previous papers, the two first-named authors introduced a notion of contact r-surgery along Legendrian knots in contact 3-manifolds. They also showed how (at least in principle) to convert any contact r-surgery into a sequence of…

From a handlebody-theoretic perspective, the simplest compact, contractible 4-manifolds, other than the 4-ball, are Mazur manifolds. We produce the first pairs of Mazur manifolds that are homeomorphic but not diffeomorphic. Our…

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…

The fundamental quandle is an invariant for distinguishing surface knots, yet computable presentations have traditionally been limited to surfaces embedded in the $4$-sphere. Building on the framework of banded unlink diagrams introduced by…

We show that the space of long knots in an euclidean space of dimension larger than three is a double loop space, proving a conjecture by Sinha. We construct also a double loop space structure on framed long knots, and show that the map…

We prove that any knot or link in any 3-manifold can be nicely decomposed (splitted) by a filling Dehn sphere. This has interesting consequences in the study of branched coverings over knots and links. We give an algorithm for computing…

For a 3-manifold with torus boundary admitting an appropriate involution, we show that Khovanov homology provides obstructions to certain exceptional Dehn fillings. For example, given a strongly invertible knot in S^3, we give obstructions…

Knots and links in 3-manifolds are studied by applying intersection invariants to singular concordances. The resulting link invariants generalize the Arf invariant, the mod 2 Sato-Levine invariants, and Milnor's triple linking numbers.…

Let $K, K'$ be ribbon knottings of $n$-spheres with $1$-handles in $S^{n+2}$, $n\geq 2$. We show that if the knot quandles of these knots are isomorphic, then the ribbon knottings are stably equivalent, in the sense of Nakanishi and…

We provide a way to produce knots in $S^3$ from signed chord diagrams, and prove that every knot can be produced in this way. Using these diagrams, we generalize the fundamental theorem of finite type invariants. We also provide moves for…

We show that all exceptional surgeries on hyperbolic alternating knots in the 3-sphere are integral surgeries.

We classify all the non-hyperbolic Dehn fillings of the complement of the chain-link with 3 components, conjectured to be the smallest hyperbolic 3-manifold with 3 cusps. We deduce the classification of all non-hyperbolic Dehn fillings of…

Let $D$ be a diagram of an alternating knot with unknotting number one. The branched double cover of $S^3$ branched over $D$ is an L-space obtained by half integral surgery on a knot $K_D$. We denote the set of all such knots $K_D$ by…

We construct knots in S^3 with Heegaard splittings of arbitrarily high distance, in any genus. As an application, for any positive integers t and b we find a tunnel number t knot in the three-sphere which has no (t,b)-decomposition.

An attempt is made to conceptualize the derivation as well as to facilitate the computation of Ohtsuki's rational invariants $\lambda_n$ of integral homology 3-spheres extracted from Reshetikhin-Turaev SU(2) quantum invariants. Several…