Related papers: Simon's knot genus problem and Lewin $3$-manifold …

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 study two homomorphisms to the rational homology sphere group. If $\psi$ denotes the inclusion homomorphism from the integral homology sphere group, then using work of Lisca we show that the image of $\psi$ intersects trivially with the…

Kronheimer and Mrowka asked whether the difference between the four-dimensional clasp number and the slice genus can be arbitrarily large. This question is answered affirmatively by studying a knot invariant derived from equivariant…

We give simple homological conditions for a rational homology 3-sphere Y to have infinite order in the rational homology cobordism group, and for a collection of rational homology spheres to be linearly independent. These translate…

We introduce a unified framework for counting representations of knot groups into $SU(2)$ and $SL(2, \mathbb{R})$. For a knot $K$ in the 3-sphere, Lin and others showed that a Casson-style count of $SU(2)$ representations with fixed…

We reconsider topological string realization of SU(N) Chern-Simons theory on S^3. At large N, for every knot K in S^3, we obtain a polynomial A_K(x,p;Q) in two variables x,p depending on the t'Hooft coupling parameter Q=e^{Ng_s}. Its…

We show that for a big class of contact manifolds the groups of order $\leq n$ invariants (with values in an arbitrary Abelian group) of Legendrian, of transverse and of framed knots are canonically isomorphic. On the other hand for an…

Boyer, Gordon, and Watson have conjectured that an irreducible rational homology 3-sphere is an L-space if and only if its fundamental group is not left-orderable. Since Dehn surgeries on knots in $S^3$ can produce large families of…

We find further evidence for the conjecture relating large N Chern-Simons theory on S^3 with topological string on the resolved conifold geometry by showing that the Wilson loop observable of a simple knot on S^3 (for any representation)…

In this paper, we show that any knot group maps onto at most finitely many knot groups. This gives an affirmative answer to a conjecture of J. Simon. We also bound the diameter of a closed hyperbolic 3-manifold linearly in terms of the…

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,…

We prove that if positive integer p-surgery along a knot K \subset S^3 produces an L-space and it bounds a sharp 4-manifold, then the knot genus obeys the bound 2g(K) -1 \leq p - \sqrt{3p+1}. Moreover, there exists an infinite family of…

We obtain new lower bounds of the minimal genus of a locally flat surface representing a 2-dimensional homology class in a topological 4-manifold with boundary, using the von Neumann-Cheeger-Gromov $\rho$-invariant. As an application our…

We consider the relationship between the crosscap number $\gamma$ of knots and a partial order on the set of all prime knots, which is defined as follows. For two knots $K$ and $J$, we say $K \geq J$ if there exists an epimorphism…

We use the 2-loop term of the Kontsevich integral to show that there are (many) knots with trivial Alexander polynomial which don't have a Seifert surface whose genus equals the rank of the Seifert form. This is one of the first…

By examining the homology groups of a 4-manifold associated to an integral surgery on a knot $K$ in a rational homology 3-sphere $Y$ yielding a rational homology 3-sphere $Y^*$ with surgery dual knot $K^*$, we show that the subgroups…

Let N be a closed, oriented 3-manifold. A folklore conjecture states that $S^{1} \times N$ admits a symplectic structure if and only if $N$ admits a fibration over the circle. We will prove this conjecture in the case when N is irreducible…

We establish certain "non-triviality" results for several filtrations of the smooth and topological knot concordance groups. First, as regards the n-solvable filtration of the topological knot concordance group defined by K. Orr, P.…

The Links-Gould invariant of links $LG^{2,1}$ is a two-variable generalization of the Alexander-Conway polynomial. Using representation theory of $U_{q}\mathfrak{gl}(2 \vert 1)$, we prove that the degree of the Links-Gould polynomial…

We investigate Friedl-L\"uck's universal $L^2$-torsion for descending HNN extensions of finitely generated free groups, and so in particular for $F_n$-by-$\mathbb{Z}$ groups. This invariant induces a semi-norm on the first cohomology of the…