Related papers: Unknotting number 21 knots are slice in K3

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…

We propose and analyze a structure with which to organize the difference between a knot in the 3-sphere bounding a topologically embedded 2-disk in the 4-ball and it bounding a smoothly embedded disk. The n-solvable filtration of the…

Given a nonorientable, locally flatly embedded surface in the $4$-sphere of nonorientable genus $h$, Massey showed that the normal Euler number lies in $\lbrace -2h,-2h+4,\ldots,2h-4,2h \rbrace$. We prove that every such surface with knot…

Conjecturally, a knot is slice if and only if its positive Whitehead double is slice. We consider an analogue of this conjecture for slice disks in the four-ball: two slice disks of a knot are smoothly isotopic if and only if their positive…

We study knots in $S^3$ with infinitely many $SU(2)$-cyclic surgeries, which are Dehn surgeries such that every representation of the resulting fundamental group into $SU(2)$ has cyclic image. We show that for every such nontrivial knot…

The unknotting number of knots is a difficult quantity to compute, and even its behavior under basic satelliting operations is not understood. We establish a lower bound on the unknotting number of cable knots and iterated cable knots…

We work in the smooth category. Let $N$ be a closed connected orientable 4-manifold with torsion free $H_1$, where $H_q := H_q(N; \mathbb Z)$. Our main result is a readily calculable classification of embeddings $N\to\mathbb R^7$ up to…

We show that given a 3-manifold $Y$ there is only a finite number of alternating knots $K \subset S^3$ such that $Y$ can be obtained by surgery on $K$. A very similar but somewhat not complete statement has been obtained in a recent…

A knot is an an embedding of a circle into three-dimensional space. We say that a knot is unknotted if there is an ambient isotopy of the embedding to a standard circle. By representing knots via planar diagrams, we discuss the problem of…

In this paper we study submanifold with nonpositive extrinsic curvature in a positively curved manifold. Among other things we prove that, if $K\subset (S^n, g)$ is a totally geodesic submanifold in a Riemannian sphere with positive…

A fixed knot $K$ acts via Murasugi sum on the space $\mathcal{S}$ of isotopy classes of knots. This operation endows $\mathcal{S}$ with a directed graph structure denoted by $M\kern-1pt SG(K)$. We show that any given family of knots in…

This paper discusses some geometric ideas associated with knots in real projective 3-space $\mathbb{R}P^3$. These ideas are borrowed from classical knot theory. Since knots in $\mathbb{R}P^3$ are classified into three disjoint classes, -…

We give three algorithms to determine the crosscap number of a knot in the 3-sphere using $0$-efficient triangulations and normal surface theory. Our algorithms are shown to be correct for a larger class of complements of knots in closed…

We compare two naturally arising notions of unknotting number for 2-spheres in the 4-sphere: namely, the minimal number of 1-handle stabilizations needed to obtain an unknotted surface, and the minimal number of Whitney moves required in a…

We use d invariants of the 2-fold branched cover to show nonsliceness of a set of algebraically slice knots.

We investigate the disparity between smooth and topological almost concordance of knots in general 3-manifolds Y. Almost concordance is defined by considering knots in Y modulo concordance in Yx[0,1] and the action of the concordance group…

Ozsv\'ath and Szab\'o conjectured that knot Floer homology detects fibred knots in $S^3$. We will prove this conjecture for null-homologous knots in arbitrary closed 3--manifolds. Namely, if $K$ is a knot in a closed 3--manifold $Y$, $Y-K$…

The concordance group of knots in the three-sphere contains an infinite subgroup generated by elements of order two, each one of which is represented by a knot K with the property that for every n > 0, the n-fold cyclic cover of S^3…

Consider a dihedral cover $f: Y\to X$ with $X$ and $Y$ four-manifolds and $f$ branched along an oriented surface embedded in $X$ with isolated cone singularities. We prove that only a slice knot can arise as the unique singularity on an…

It is known that any tame hyperbolic 3-manifold with infinite volume and a single end is the geometric limit of a sequence of finite volume hyperbolic knot complements. Purcell and Souto showed that if the original manifold embeds in the…