Related papers: Local Knots, $\nu^+$-Sharp Knots, and Rational Sli…

We provide a new obstruction for a rational homology 3-sphere to arise by Dehn surgery on a given knot in the 3-sphere. The obstruction takes the form of an inequality involving the genus of the knot, the surgery coefficient, and a count of…

It is known that knot Floer homology detects the genus and Alexander polynomial of a knot. We investigate whether knot Floer homology of $K$ detects more structure of minimal genus Seifert surfaces for $K$. We define an invariant of…

A knot in $S^3$ is rationally slice if it bounds a disk in a rational homology ball. We give an infinite family of rationally slice knots that are linearly independent in the knot concordance group. In particular, our examples are all…

An important difference between high dimensional smooth manifolds and smooth 4-manifolds that in a 4-manifold it is not always possible to represent every middle dimensional homology class with a smoothly embedded sphere. This is true even…

We prove a recent conjecture of Manolescu-Willis which states that the $s$-invariant of a knot in $\mathbb{RP}^3$ (as defined by them) gives a lower bound on its null-homologous slice genus in the unit disk bundle of $TS^2$. We also…

Let $K$ be a rationally null-homologous knot in a three-manifold $Y$. We construct a version of knot Floer homology in this context, including a description of the Floer homology of a three-manifold obtained as Morse surgery on the knot…

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.…

We study the homology concordance group of knots in integer homology three-spheres which bound integer homology four-balls. Using knot Floer homology, we construct an infinite number of $\mathbb{Z}$-valued, linearly independent homology…

In this paper, we study topological concordance modulo local knotting, or almost-concordance, of knots in 3-manifolds $M\neq S^3$. A. Levine, Celoria (arXiv:1602.05476v4), and Friedl-Nagel-Orson-Powell (arXiv:1611.09114v2) conjecture that,…

Let $LHT$ be a left handed trefoil knot and $K$ be any knot. We define $M_n(K)$ to be the homology $3$-sphere which is represented by a simple link of $LHT$ and $LHT \sharp K$ with framings $0$ and $n$ respectively. Starting with this link,…

A crucial step in the surgery-theoretic program to classify smooth manifolds is that of representing a middle--dimensional homology class by a smoothly embedded sphere. This step fails even for the simple 4-manifolds obtained from the…

We show that the problem of deciding whether a knot in a fixed closed orientable 3-dimensional manifold bounds a surface of genus at most $g$ is in co-NP. This answers a question of Agol, Hass, and Thurston in 2002. Previously, this was…

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…

The doubly slice genus of a knot in the 3-sphere is the minimal genus among unknotted orientable surfaces in the 4-sphere for which the knot arises as a cross-section. We use the classical signature function of the knot to give a new lower…

We prove that twisted correction terms in Heegaard Floer homology provide lower bounds on the Thurston norm of certain cohomology classes determined by the strong concordance class of a 2-component link $L$ in $S^3$. We then specialise this…

Motivated by the L-space conjecture, we investigate various notions of order-detection of slopes on knot manifolds. These notions are designed to characterise when rational homology 3-spheres obtained by gluing compact manifolds along torus…

Suppose that a hyperbolic knot in $S^3$ admits a finite surgery, Boyer and Zhang proved that the surgery slope must be either integral or half-integral, and they conjectured that the latter case does not happen. Using the correction terms…

We show that the difference between the topological 4-genus of a knot and the minimal genus of a surface bounded by that knot that can be decomposed into a smooth concordance followed by an algebraically simple locally flat surface can be…

Let $X$ be a closed indefinite $4$-manifold with $b_+(X) = 3 \; ({\rm mod} \; 4)$ and with non-vanishing mod $2$ Seiberg--Witten invariants. We prove a new lower bound on the genus of a properly embedded surface in $X \setminus B^4$…

The trace of $n$-framed surgery on a knot in $S^3$ is a 4-manifold homotopy equivalent to the 2-sphere. We characterise when a generator of the second homotopy group of such a manifold can be realised by a locally flat embedded 2-sphere…