Related papers: A note on cabled slice knots and reducible surgeri…
These notes were prepared to accompany a sequence of three lectures at the conference Winterbraids XI in Dijon, held in December 2021. In them, we provide an introduction to slice knots and the equivalence relation of concordance. We…
Let K' be a hyperbolic knot in S^3 and suppose that some Dehn surgery on K' with distance at least 3 from the meridian yields a 3-manifold M of Heegaard genus 2. We show that if M does not contain an embedded Dyck's surface (the closed…
Exceptional Dehn surgeries on arborescent knots have been classified except for Seifert fibered surgeries on Montesinos knots of length 3. There are infinitely many of them as it is known that 4n+6 and 4n+7 surgeries on a (-2, 3, 2n+1)…
We give an obstruction to unknotting a knot by adding a twisted band, derived from Heegaard Floer homology.
We investigate the concordance properties of `parallel links' P(K), given by the (2,0) cable of a knot K. We focus on the question: if P(K) is concordant to a split link, is K necessarily slice? We show that if P(K) is smoothly concordant…
In this paper, we develop a lower bound for the double slice genus of a knot using Casson-Gordon invariants. As an application, we show that the double slice genus can be arbitrarily larger than twice the slice genus. As an analogue to the…
We use Heegaard Floer homology to obtain bounds on unknotting numbers. This is a generalisation of Ozsvath and Szabo's obstruction to unknotting number one. We determine the unknotting numbers of 9_10, 9_13, 9_35, 9_38, 10_53, 10_101 and…
A Heegaard splitting which admits a unique pair of disjoint compression disks on distinct sides is said to be keen weakly reducible. This paper provides an construction of keen weakly reducible Heegaard splittings of arbitrary genus except…
We define a notion of complexity for shake-slice knots which is analogous to the definition of complexity for h-cobordisms studied by Morgan-Szab\'o. We prove that for each framing $n \ne 0$ and complexity $c \ge 0$, there is an…
We consider the question of when the operation of contact surgery with positive surgery coefficient, along a knot $K$ in a contact 3-manifold $Y$, gives rise to a weakly fillable contact structure. We show that this happens if and only if…
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…
In the 60's Levine proved that if $R$ is a slice knot, then on any genus $g$ Seifert surface for $R$ there is a $g$ component link $J$, called a derivative of $R$, on which the Seifert form vanishes. Many subsequent obstructions to $R$…
We examine certain symmetries in the deficiencies of a rational surgery on a knot in $S^3$ by comparing the $\text{Spin}^c$-structures on the rational surgery with those on a related integral surgery. We then provide an application of these…
The twisting number of a ribbon knot $K$ is the minimal number of tangle replacements on the symmetry axis of $J \# -J$ for any knot $J$ that is required to produce a symmetric union diagram of $K$. We prove that the twisting number is…
The Cabling Conjecture states that surgery on hyperbolic knots in $S^3$ never produces reducible manifolds. In contrast, there do exist hyperbolic knots in some lens spaces with non-prime surgeries. Baker constructed a family of such…
We give the rectangle condition for strong irreducibility of Heegaard splittings of $3$-manifolds with non-empty boundary. We apply this to a generalized Heegaard splitting of a $2$-fold covering of $S^3$ branched along a link. The…
In this article, we prove that a tunnel number two knot induces a critical Heegaard splitting in its exterior if there are two weak reducing pairs such that each weak reducing pair contains the cocore disk of each tunnel. Moreover, we prove…
This article is solicited by C.\ Adams for a special issue of {\it Chaos, Solitons and Fractals\/} devoted to knot theory and its applications. We present some recent results about Dehn surgeries on arborescent knots and links.
We show that perturbing the definition of sl(n) Khovanov-Rozansky link homology gives a lower bound on the slice genus of a knot. As a corollary this yields another proof of Milnor's conjecture on the slice genus of torus knots.
We show that if a surgery on a knot in a product sutured manifold yields the same product sutured manifold, then this knot is a 0-- or 1--crossing knot. The proof uses techniques from sutured manifold theory.