Related papers: Khovanov homology and exotic $4$-manifolds
In a recent breakthrough, Ren and Willis gave the first analysis-free proof of the existence of exotic compact, orientable 4-manifolds; their main tool is the Khovanov skein lasagna module defined by Morrison, Walker, and Wedrich. In this…
We construct and study the skein lasagna module obtained by importing the Bar-Natan Khovanov homology package. For 4-manifolds satisfying a non-vanishing condition, we produce pairs of exotic surfaces (with boundary) by using the behavior…
We introduce a new diffeomorphism invariant of smooth compact oriented 4-manifolds $X$ with a framed oriented 1-link $L$ in the boundary, where $L$ may be the empty set, and call it {\it Khovanov-Lipshitz-Sarkar skein lasagna homotopy type}…
We use Khovanov-Rozansky gl(N) link homology to define invariants of oriented smooth 4-manifolds, as skein modules constructed from certain 4-categories with well-behaved duals. The technical heart of this construction is a proof of the…
We construct analogs of Khovanov-Jacobsson classes and the Rasmussen invariant for links in the boundary of any smooth oriented 4-manifold. The main tools are skein lasagna modules based on equivariant and deformed versions of…
We give a short exposition of Ren and Willis's analysis-free proof of the existence of exotic compact, orientable 4-manifolds. There are two distinguishing features of our exposition. First, we avoid skein lasagna modules; we use Beliakova…
The skein lasagna module is an extension of Khovanov-Rozansky homology to the setting of a four-manifold and a link in its boundary. This invariant plays the role of the Hilbert space of an associated fully extended (4+epsilon)-dimensional…
We construct a variant of Khovanov skein lasagna modules, which takes the Khovanov homology in connected sums of $S^1\times S^2$ defined by Rozansky and Willis as the input link homology. To carry out the construction, we prove…
This is a survey article about the connections between knot theory and four-dimensional topology. Every four-manifold can be represented in terms of a link, by a Kirby diagram. This point of view has led to progress in computing invariants…
We show that the cobordism maps on Khovanov homology can distinguish smooth surfaces in the 4-ball that are exotically knotted (i.e., isotopic through ambient homeomorphisms but not ambient diffeomorphisms). We develop new techniques for…
In this article, we give new means of constructing and distinguishing closed exotic four-manifolds. Using Heegaard Floer homology, we define new closed four-manifold invariants that are distinct from the Seiberg--Witten and Bauer--Furuta…
Attaching a Casson handle to a slice disk complement yields a smooth 4-manifold that is homeomorphic to $\mathbb{R}^4$. We show that if two slice knots have sufficiently different knot Floer homology, then the resulting exotic…
The checkerboard coloring of knot diagrams offers a graph-theoretical approach to address topological questions. Champanerkar and Kofman defined a complex generated by the spanning trees of a graph obtained from the checkerboard coloring…
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 introduce an invariant of tangles in Khovanov homology by considering a natural inverse system of Khovanov homology groups. As application, we derive an invariant of strongly invertible knots; this invariant takes the form of a graded…
This survey reviews recent advances connecting link homology theories to invariants of smooth 4-manifolds and extended topological quantum field theories. Starting from joint work with Morrison and Walker, I explain how functorial link…
We show that, for each integer n, there exist infinitely many pairs of n-framed knots representing homeomorphic but non-diffeomorphic (Stein) 4-manifolds, which are the simplest possible exotic 4-manifolds regarding handlebody structures.…
Morrison, Walker, and Wedrich used the blob complex to construct a generalization of Khovanov-Rozansky homology to links in the boundary of a 4-manifold. The degree zero part of their theory, called the skein lasagna module, admits an…
It is known that there is a unique concordance class in the free homotopy class of $S^1\times pt \subset S^1 \times S^2$. The constructive proof of this fact is given by the second author. It turns out that all the concordances in this…
We prove that the hypothetical extreme Khovanov cohomology of a link is the cohomology of the independence simplicial complex of its Lando graph. We also provide a family of knots having as many non-trivial extreme Khovanov cohomology…