Related papers: Slice depth of 2-knots

The concordance genus of a knot is the least genus of any knot in its concordance class. It is bounded above by the genus of the knot, and bounded below by the slice genus, two well-studied invariants. In this paper we consider the…

For all n > 0 there is a homomorphism from the smooth concordance group of knots in dimension 2n + 1 to an algebraically defined group called the rational algebraic concordance group. This algebraic concordance group splits as a direct sum…

For certain classes of knots we define geometric invariants called higher-order genera. Each of these invariants is a refinement of the slice genus of a knot. We find lower bounds for the higher-order genera in terms of certain von Neumann…

This thesis develops some general calculational techniques for finding the orders of knots in the topological concordance group C. The techniques currently available in the literature are either too theoretical, applying to only a small…

We give a necessary, and in some cases sufficient, condition for sliceness inside the family of pretzel knots $P (p_1,...,p_n)$ with one $p_i$ even. The three stranded case yields two interesting families of examples: the first consists of…

An equilateral stick number $s_{=}(K)$ of a knot $K$ is defined to be the minimal number of sticks required to construct a polygonal knot of $K$ which consists of equal length sticks. Rawdon and Scharein [12] found upper bounds for the…

Knots and links which are closed 3-braids are a very special class. Like 2-bridge knots and links, they are simple enough to admit a complete classification. At the same time they are rich enough to serve as a source of examples on which,…

A 2-sphere embedded in the 4-sphere invariant under a circle action is called a branched twist spin. A branched twist spin is constructed from a 1-knot in the 3-sphere and a pair of coprime integers uniquely. In this paper, we study, for…

For some families of two-bridge knots, including double-twist knots with genus at least four, we determine precisely the set of integers $n>1$ such that the fundamental group of the $n$-fold cyclic branched cover of the 3-sphere along these…

Bing doubling is an operation which produces a 2-component boundary link B(K) from a knot K. If K is slice, then B(K) is easily seen to be boundary slice. In this paper, we investigate whether the converse holds. Our main result is that if…

We introduce an unknotting-type number of knot projections that gives an upper bound of the crosscap number of knots. We determine the set of knot projections with the unknotting-type number at most two, and this result implies classical…

It is known that the linking form on the 2-cover of slice knots has a metabolizer. We show that several weaker conditions, or some other conditions related to sliceness, do not imply the existence of a metabolizer. We then show how the…

Whitehead doubles provide a plethora of examples of knots that are topologically slice but not smoothly slice. We discuss the problem of the Whitehead double of the Figure 8 knot and survey commonly used techniques to obstructing sliceness.…

The existence of topologically slice knots that are of infinite order in the knot concordance group followed from Freedman's work on topological surgery and Donaldson's gauge theoretic approach to 4-manifolds. Here, as an application of…

This paper concerns the H(2)-unknotting numbers of links related to 2-bridge links. It consists of three parts. In the first part, we consider a necessary and sufficient condition for a 2-bridge link to have H(2)-unknotting number one. The…

A knot is said to be slice if it bounds a smooth properly embedded disk in the 4-ball. We demonstrate that the Conway knot, 11n34 in the Rolfsen tables, is not slice. This completes the classification of slice knots under 13 crossings, and…

We study the degree of polynomial representations of knots. We give the lexicographic degree of all two-bridge knots with 11 or fewer crossings. First, we estimate the total degree of a lexicographic parametrisation of such a knot. This…

We prove that all knots with unknotting number at most 21 are smoothly slice in the K3 surface. We also prove a more general statement for 4-manifolds that contain a plumbing tree of spheres. Our strategy is based on a flexible method to…

Ropelength and embedding thickness are related measures of geometric complexity of classical knots and links in Euclidean space. In their recent work, Freedman and Krushkal posed a question regarding lower bounds for embedding thickness of…

A classical knot is described by a one-stroke trajectory with entanglements of a string. The replica method appears as a powerful tool in statistical mechanics for a polymer or self-avoiding walk. We consider this replica N to 0 limit in…