Related papers: On 2-knots and connected sums with projective plan…

A knotted surface in the 4-sphere may be described by means of a hyperbolic diagram that captures the 0-section of a special Morse function, called a hyperbolic decomposition. We show that every hyperbolic decomposition of a knotted surface…

We use the Bar-Natan Zh-correspondence to identify the generalized Alexander polynomial of a virtual knot with the Alexander polynomial of a two component welded link. We show that the Zh-map is functorial under concordance, and also that…

A holonomic knot is a knot in 3-space which arises as the 2-jet extension of a smooth function on the circle. A holonomic knot associated to a generic function is naturally framed by the blackboard framing of the knot diagram associated to…

We study smooth, proper embeddings of noncompact surfaces in 4-manifolds, focusing on exotic planes and annuli, i.e., embeddings pairwise homeomorphic to the standard embeddings of R^2 and R^2-int D^2 in R^4. We encounter two uncountable…

In this thesis, we prove several results concerning field-theoretic invariants of knots and 3-manifolds. In Chapter 2, for any knot $K$ in a closed, oriented 3-manifold $M$, we use $SU(2)$ representation spaces and the Lagrangian field…

For a genus-1 1-bridge knot in the 3-sphere, that is, a (1,1)-knot, a middle tunnel is a tunnel that is not an upper or lower tunnel for some (1,1)-position. Most torus knots have a middle tunnel, and non-torus-knot examples were obtained…

A torti-rational knot, denoted by K(2a,b|r), is a knot obtained from the 2-bridge link B(2a,b) by applying Dehn twists an arbitrary number of times, r, along one component of B(2a,b). We determine the genus of K(2a,b|r) and solve a question…

It has been conjectured that the geometric invariant of knots in 3-space called the width is nearly additive. That is, letting w(K) in N denote the width of a knot K in S^3, the conjecture is that w(K # K') = w(K) + w(K') - 2. We give an…

For a knot $K,$ a slope $r$ is said to be characterizing if for no other knot $J$ does $r$-framed surgery along $J$ yield the same manifold as $r$-framed surgery on $K.$ Applying a condition of Baker and Motegi, we show that the knots…

This paper studies twisted signature invariants and twisted linking forms, with a view towards obstructions to knot concordance. Given a knot $K$ and a representation $\rho$ of the knot group, we define a twisted signature function…

We show that the Kakimizu complex of a knot may be locally infinite, answering a question of Przytycki--Schultens. We then prove that if a link $L$ only has connected Seifert surfaces and has a locally infinite Kakimizu complex then $L$ is…

We study the 2-loop part of the rational Kontsevich integral of a knot in an integer homology sphere. We give a general formula which explains how the 2-loop part of the Kontsevich integral of a knot changes after surgery on a single…

We determine the relationship between the contact structure induced by a fibered knot, K, in the three-sphere and the contact structures induced by its various cables. Understanding this relationship allows us to classify fibered cable…

We show that a simply connected stable plane with connected lines is isomorphic to an open subplane of a classical projective plane (i.e., a plane over the real or complex numbers, the quaternions or the octonions) if it has that property…

We construct families of trivial $2$-knots $K_i$ in $\mathbb{R}^4$ such that the maximal complexity of $2$-knots in any isotopy connecting $K_i$ with the standard unknot grows faster than a tower of exponentials of any fixed height of the…

Fintushel and Stern have proved that if S \subset X is a symplectic surface in a symplectic 4-manifold such that S has simply-connected complement and nonnegative self-intersection, then there are infinitely many topologically equivalent…

We study positive braid knots (the knots in the three-sphere realized as positive braid closures) through the lens of the L-space conjecture. This conjecture predicts that if $K$ is a non-trivial positive braid knot, then for all $r <…

In this paper we describe what should perhaps be called a `type-2' Vassiliev invariant of knots S^2 -> S^4. We give a formula for an invariant of 2-knots, taking values in Z_2 that can be computed in terms of the double-point diagram of the…

In this paper, we demonstrate that the complete hyperbolic structure of various two-bridge knots and links cannot be deformed to an inequivalent strictly convex projective structure. We also prove a complementary result showing that under…

Let K be a knot that has an unknotting tunnel tau. We prove that K admits a strong involution that fixes tau pointwise if and only if K is a two-bridge knot and tau its upper or lower tunnel.