Related papers: Shake genus and slice genus

We study the set $\widehat{\mathcal S}_M$ of framed smoothly slice links which lie on the boundary of the complement of a 1-handlebody in a closed, simply connected, smooth 4-manifold $M$. We show that $\widehat{\mathcal S}_M$ is…

Using Heegaard Floer homology, we construct a numerical invariant for any smooth, oriented $4$-manifold $X$ with the homology of $S^1 \times S^3$. Specifically, we show that for any smoothly embedded $3$-manifold $Y$ representing a…

To a smooth, compact, oriented, properly-embedded surface in the $4$-ball, we define an invariant of its boundary-preserving isotopy class from the Khovanov homology of its boundary link. Previous work showed that when the boundary link is…

We construct examples of non-isotrivial algebraic families of smooth complex projective curves over a curve of genus 2. This solves a problem from Kirby's list of problems in low-dimensional topology. Namely, we show that 2 is the smallest…

It is known that knot Floer homology detects the genus and Alexander polynomial of a knot. We investigate whether knot Floer homology of $K$ detects more structure of minimal genus Seifert surfaces for $K$. We define an invariant of…

We use recently introduced Rasmussen invariant to find knots that are topologically locally-flatly slice but not smoothly slice. We note that this invariant can be used to give a combinatorial proof of the slice-Bennequin inequality.…

We construct an invariant of closed ${\rm spin}^c$ 4-manifolds using families of Seiberg-Witten equations. This invariant is formulated as a cohomology class on a certain abstract simplicial complex consisting of embedded surfaces of a…

We construct a new family of knot concordance invariants $\theta^{(q)}(K)$, where $q$ is a prime number. Our invariants are obtained from the equivariant Seiberg-Witten-Floer cohomology, constructed by the author and Hekmati, applied to the…

We investigate constraints on embeddings of a non-orientable surface in a $4$-manifold with the homology of $M \times I$, where $M$ is a rational homology $3$-sphere. The constraints take the form of inequalities involving the genus and…

We study exotic smoothings of open 4-manifolds using the minimal genus function and its analog for end homology. While traditional techniques in open 4-manifold smoothing theory give no control of minimal genera, we make progress by using…

We give a method for constructing many pairs of distinct knots $K_0$ and $K_1$ such that the two 4-manifolds obtained by attaching a 2-handle to $B^4$ along $K_i$ with framing zero are diffeomorphic. We use the d-invariants of Heegaard…

We use the knot homology of Khovanov and Lee to construct link concordance invariants generalizing the Rasmussen $s$-invariant of knots. The relevant invariant for a link is a filtration on a vector space of dimension $2^{|L|}$. The basic…

We say that two knots are friends if they share the same 0-surgery. Two friends with different sliceness status would provide a counterexample to the 4-dimensional smooth Poincar\'e conjecture. Here we create a census of all friends with…

Kronheimer and Mrowka asked whether the difference between the four-dimensional clasp number and the slice genus can be arbitrarily large. This question is answered affirmatively by studying a knot invariant derived from equivariant…

We relate the Donaldson invariants of two four-manifolds $X_i$ with embedded Riemann surfaces of genus 2 and self-intersection zero with the invariants of the manifold X which appears as a connected sum along the surfaces. When the original…

This elementary article introduces easy-to-manage invariants of genus one knots in homology 3-spheres. To prove their invariance, we investigate properties of an invariant of 3-dimensional genus two homology handlebodies called the…

The slicing number of a knot, $u_s(K)$, is the minimum number of crossing changes required to convert $K$ to a slice knot. This invariant is bounded above by the unknotting number and below by the slice genus $g_s(K)$. We show that for many…

We introduce the notion of ascent sliceness of virtual knots. A representative of a virtual knot is an embedding $ S^1 \hookrightarrow \Sigma_{g} \times I $, for $ \Sigma_g $ a closed connected oriented surface of genus $ g $; the virtual…

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…

Let $X^4$ and $Y^4$ be smooth manifolds and $f: X\to Y$ a branched cover with branching set $B$. Classically, if $B$ is smoothly embedded in $Y$, the signature $\sigma(X)$ can be computed from data about $Y$, $B$ and the local degrees of…