Related papers: The Complexity of Shake Slice Knots
Prime power fold cyclic branched covers along smoothly slice knots all bound rational homology balls. This phenomenon, however, does not characterize slice knots. In this paper, we give a new construction of non-slice knots that have the…
The first and last named authors have demonstrated the existence of knots for which every integral slope is non-characterizing. In this short note, we extend this result in two ways. There exists a knot that shares for every integer n the…
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…
A slope $p/q$ is said to be characterizing for a knot $K$ if the homeomorphism type of the $p/q$-Dehn surgery along $K$ determines the knot up to isotopy. Extending previous work of Lackenby and McCoy on hyperbolic and torus knots…
We define a measure of "complexity" of a braid which is natural with respect to both an algebraic and a geometric point of view. Algebraically, we modify the standard notion of the length of a braid by introducing generators $\Delta\_{ij}$,…
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,…
Given a knot in $S^3$, one can associate to it a surface diffeomorphism in two different ways. First, an arbitrary knot in $S^{3}$ can be represented by braids, which can be thought of as diffeomorphisms of punctured disks. Second, if the…
We introduce and study the notion of equivariant $\mathbb{Q}$-sliceness for strongly invertible knots. On the constructive side, we prove that every Klein amphichiral knot, which is a strongly invertible knot admitting a compatible negative…
In [BF12] the authors associated to a knot K an invariant n_R(K) which is defined using the Blanchfield form and which gives a lower bound on the unknotting number. In this paper we express n_R(K) in terms of Levine-Tristram signatures and…
Given a link L in the 3-sphere, we ask whether the components of L bound disjoint, nullhomologous disks properly embedded in a simply-connected positive-definite smooth 4-manifold; the knot case has been studied extensively in work of…
In this study of the Reidemeister moves within the classical knot theory, we focus on hard diagrams of knots and links, categorizing them as either rigid or shaky based on their adaptability to certain moves. We establish that every link…
As proved by Hedden and Ording, there exist knots for which the Ozsvath-Szabo and Rasmussen smooth concordance invariants, tau and s, differ. The Hedden-Ording examples have nontrivial Alexander polynomials and are not topologically slice.…
This paper presents evidence supporting the surprising conjecture that in the topological category the slice genus of a satellite knot $P(K)$ is bounded above by the sum of the slice genera of $K$ and $P(U)$. Our main result establishes…
We prove that many pretzel knots of the form $P(2n,m,-2n\pm1,-m)$ are not topologically slice, even though their positive mutants $P(2n, -2n\pm1, m, -m)$ are ribbon. We use the sliceness obstruction of Kirk and Livingston related to the…
Motivated by the works of Krasner [arXiv:0801.4018] and Lobb [arXiv:1103.1412], we simplify the Khovanov-Rozansky chain complexes of open 2-braids. As an application, we show that, for a knot containing a "long" 2-braid, the sl(N) Rasmussen…
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 investigate the properties of knots in S^3 which bound Klein bottles, such that a pushoff of the knot has zero linking number with the knot, i.e. has zero framing. This is motivated by the many results in the literature regarding slice…
We give a new geometric obstruction to the iterated Bing double of a knot being a slice link: for n>1 the (n+1)-st iterated Bing double of a knot is rationally slice if and only if the n-th iterated Bing double of the knot is rationally…
The classical knot recognition problem is the problem of determining whether the virtual knot represented by a given diagram is classical. We prove that this problem is in NP, and we give an exponential time algorithm for the problem.
We provide three 3-dimensional characterizations of the Z-slice genus of a knot, the minimal genus of a locally-flat surface in 4-space cobounding the knot whose complement has cyclic fundamental group: in terms of balanced algebraic…