Related papers: On smoothly superslice knots

We develop obstructions to a knot K in the 3-sphere bounding a smooth punctured Klein bottle in the 4-ball. The simplest of these is based on the linking form of the 2-fold branched cover of the 3-sphere branched over K. Stronger…

A polynomial knot is a smooth embedding $\kappa: \real \to \real^n$ whose components are polynomials. The case $n = 3$ is of particular interest. It is both an object of real algebraic geometry as well as being an open ended topological…

In 1982 Louis Kauffman conjectured that if a knot in the 3-sphere is a slice knot then on any Seifert surface for that knot there exists a homologically essential simple closed curve of self-linking zero which is itself a slice knot, or at…

For a fibered knot in the 3-sphere the twisted Alexander polynomial associated to an SL(2,C)-character is known to be monic. It is conjectured that for a nonfibered knot there is a curve component of the SL(2,C)-character variety containing…

We prove that an odd pretzel knot is doubly slice if it has $2n+1$ twist parameters consisting of $n+1$ copies of $a$ and $n$ copies of $-a$ for some odd integer $a$. Combined with the work of Issa and McCoy, it follows that these are the…

We study the $\mathbb{CP}^2$-slicing number of knots, i.e. the smallest $m\geq 0$ such that a knot $K\subseteq S^3$ bounds a properly embedded, null-homologous disk in a punctured connected sum $(\#^m\mathbb{CP}^2)^{\times}$. We give a…

We consider knots and links in handlebodies that have hyperbolic complements and operations akin to composition. Cutting the complements of two such open along separating twice-punctured disks such that each of the four resulting…

An oriented link L in a 3-sphere S in complex 2-space is a C-boundary if it bounds a piece of algebraic curve in the 4-ball bounded by S. Using Kronheimer and Mrowka's proof of the Thom Conjecture, we construct many oriented knots which are…

We construct examples of non-smoothable surfaces in the $4$-sphere, thereby answering Question 4.32 on the K3 problem list. These surfaces are non-orientable and have knot group of order $2$, thus simultaneously answering Question 4.29(a)…

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…

Let K be a knot in the 3-sphere. A slope p/q is said to be characterising for K if whenever p/q surgery on K is homeomorphic, via an orientation-preserving homeomorphism, to p/q surgery on another knot K' in the 3-sphere, then K and K' are…

We say a knot $k$ in the 3-sphere $\mathbb S^3$ has {\it Property $IE$} if the infinite cyclic cover of the knot exterior embeds into $\mathbb S^3$. Clearly all fibred knots have Property $IE$. There are infinitely many non-fibred knots…

Bing doubling is an operation which produces a 2-component boundary link B(K) from a knot K. If K is slice, then B(K) is easily seen to be boundary slice. In this paper, we investigate whether the converse holds. Our main result is that if…

In this paper we look at the knot complement problem for L-space $\mathbb{Z}$-homology spheres. We show that an L-space $\mathbb{Z}$-homology sphere $Y$ cannot be obtained as a non-trivial surgery along a knot $K\subset Y$. As a…

Let p be an odd prime and D_p a dihedral group of order 2p. Let \rho: G(K) --> D_p --> GL(p,Z) be a non-abelian representation of the knot group G(K) of a knot K in 3-sphere. Let \Delta_{\rho,K} (t) be the twisted Alexander polynomial of K…

Many well studied knots can be realized as positive braid knots where the braid word contains a positive full twist; we say that such knots are twist positive. Some important families of knots are twist positive, including torus knots,…

By the Fox's re-embedding theorem, any compact submanifold of the 3-sphere can be re-embedded in the 3-sphere so that it is unknotted. It is unknown whether the Fox's re-embedding can be replaced with twistings. In this paper, we will show…

This thesis develops some general calculational techniques for finding the orders of knots in the topological concordance group C. The techniques currently available in the literature are either too theoretical, applying to only a small…

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 address the primary decomposition of the knot concordance group in terms of the solvable filtration and higher-order von Neumann $\rho$-invariants by Cochran, Orr, and Teichner. We show that for a nonnegative integer n, if the connected…