Related papers: Unknotted Curves on Seifert Surfaces

We construct a system of 33 essential simple closed curves that are pairwise non-homotopic and intersect at most once on the oriented, closed surface of genus 3. Moreover, we show that our construction is saturated, in the sense that it is…

We determine the structure of the circular handle decompositions of the family of free genus one knots. Namely, if k is a free genus one knot, then the handle number h(k)= 0, 1 or 2, and, if k is not fibered (that is, if h(k)>0), then k is…

We show that any two same-genus, oriented, boundary parallel surfaces bounded by a non-split, alternating link into the 4-ball are smoothly isotopic fixing boundary. In other words, any same-genus Seifert surfaces for a non-split,…

We show that smooth curves with prescribed curvature satisfy a $C^1$-dense $h$-principle in the space of immersed curves in Euclidean space. More precisely, every $C^{\alpha \geq 2}$ curve with nonvanishing curvature in $R^{n\geq 3}$ can be…

Let K be a knot in S^3 of genus g and let n>0. We show that if rk HFK(K,g) < 2^{n+1} (where HFK denotes knot Floer homology), in particular if K is an alternating knot such that the leading coefficient a_g of its Alexander polynomial…

We prove that any link admitting a diagram with a single negative crossing is strongly quasipositive. This answers a question of Stoimenow's in the (strong) positive. As a second main result, we give simple and complete characterizations of…

A Seifert surface F for a knot K is disk decomposable if there is a taut sutured manifold heirarchy for the complement of F, whose decomposing surfaces are all disks. It follows that F has minimal genus for the knot K, and has handlebody…

Let S(D) be the surface produced by applying Seifert's algorithm to the oriented link diagram D. I prove that if D has no negative crossings then S(D) is a quasipositive Seifert surface, that is, S(D) embeds incompressibly on a fiber…

A zigzag in a map (a $2$-cell embedding of a connected graph in a connected closed $2$-dimensional surface) is a cyclic sequence of edges satisfying the following conditions: 1) any two consecutive edges lie on the same face and have a…

The contents of this 6-page paper have been subsumed into the 13-page paper, "A note on closed 3-braids", arXiv:0802.1072 [math.GT]. This paper is correct, but contains less information than the new one. The topological classification of…

We complete the remaining cases of the conjecture predicting existence of infinitely many rational curves on K3 surfaces in characteristic zero, prove almost all cases in positive characteristic and improve the proofs of the previously…

A knot in $S^3$ is topologically slice if it bounds a locally flat disk in $B^4$. A knot in $S^3$ is rationally slice if it bounds a smooth disk in a rational homology ball. We prove that the smooth concordance group of topologically and…

For an oriented link $L \subset S^3 = \Bd\!D^4$, let $\chi_s(L)$ be the greatest Euler characteristic $\chi(F)$ of an oriented 2-manifold $F$ (without closed components) smoothly embedded in $D^4$ with boundary $L$. A knot $K$ is {\it…

In this paper we introduce "critical surfaces", which are described via a 1-complex whose definition is reminiscent of the curve complex. Our main result is that if the minimal genus common stabilization of a pair of strongly irreducible…

In a recent article, the authors constructed a six-parameter family of highly connected 7-manifolds which admit an SO(3)-invariant metric of non-negative sectional curvature. Each member of this family is the total space of a Seifert…

We consider the question of how many essential Seifert Klein bottles with common boundary slope a knot in S^3 can bound, up to ambient isotopy. We prove that any hyperbolic knot in S^3 bounds at most six Seifert Klein bottles with a given…

In this paper we study embeddings of oriented connected closed surfaces in $\mathbb S^3$. We define a complete invariant, the fundamental span, for such embeddings, generalizing the notion of the peripheral system of a knot group. From the…

We consider the subspace of the homology of a covering space spanned by lifts of simple closed curves. Our main result is the existence of unbranched covers of surfaces where this is a proper subspace. More generally, for a fixed finite…

We exhibit a distinctly low-dimensional dynamical obstruction to the existence of Liouville cobordisms: for any contact 3-manifold admitting an exact symplectic cobordism to the tight 3-sphere, every nondegenerate contact form admits an…

A 1-tangle is a properly embedded arc $\psi$ in an unknotted solid torus $V$ in $S^3$. Attaching an arc $\phi$ in the complementary solid torus $W$ to its endpoints creates a knot $K(\phi)$ called the closure of $\psi$. We show that for a…