Related papers: Properties of closed 3-braids

We introduce new polynomial isotopy invariants for closed braids. They are constructed as polynomial valued {\em Gauss diagram 1-cocycles} evaluated on the full rotation of the closed braid $\hat \beta$ around the core of the corresponding…

It is known that every closed oriented 3-manifold is homology cobordant to a hyperbolic 3-manifold. By contrast we show that many homology cobordism classes contain no Seifert fibered 3-manifold. This is accomplished by determining the…

We prove that any compact, orientable 3-manifold with empty or toral boundary is profinitely almost rigid among all compact, orientable 3-manifolds. In other words, the profinite completion of its fundamental group determines its…

We introduce a new algebraic topological technique to detect non-fibred knots in the three sphere using the twisted Alexander invariants. As an application, we show that for any Seifert matrix of a knot with a nontrivial Alexander…

To a closed braid in a solid torus we associate a trace graph in a thickened torus in such a way that closed braids are isotopic if and only if their trace graphs can be related by trihedral and tetraherdal moves. For closed braids with a…

This paper is devoted to discussing affine Hirsch foliations on $3$-manifolds. First, we prove that up to isotopic leaf-conjugacy, every closed orientable $3$-manifold $M$ admits $0$, $1$ or $2$ affine Hirsch foliations. Furthermore, every…

Suppose $K$ is a knot in a closed 3-manifold $M$ such that $\bar{M-N(K)}$ is irreducible. We show that for any positive integer $b$ there exists a triangulation of $\bar{M-N(K)}$ such that any weakly incompressible bridge surface for $K$ of…

This short note is about three-stranded pretzel knots that have an even number of crossings in one of the strands. We calculate the braid index of such knots and determine which of them are quasipositive. The main tools are the…

We consider closed acylindrical surfaces in 3-manifolds and in knot and link complements, and show that the genus of these surfaces is bounded linearly by the number of tetrahedra in the triangulation of the manifold and by the number of…

We show that every good boundary link with a pair of derivative links on a Seifert surface satisfying a homotopically trivial plus assumption is freely slice. This subsumes all previously known methods for freely slicing good boundary links…

We consider hyperbolic links that admit alternating projections on surfaces in compact, irreducible 3-manifolds. We show that, under some mild hypotheses, the volume of the complement of such a link is bounded below in terms of a Kauffman…

We provide linear lower bounds for the signature of positive braids in terms of the three genus of their braid closure. This yields linear bounds for the topological slice genus of knots that arise as closures of positive braids.

We study a twisted Alexander polynomial naturally associated to a hyperbolic knot in an integer homology 3-sphere via a lift of the holonomy representation to SL(2, C). It is an unambiguous symmetric Laurent polynomial whose coefficients…

We study knots in $\mathbb{S}^3$ obtained by the intersection of a minimal surface in $\mathbb{R}^4$ with a small 3-sphere centered at a branch point. We construct examples of new minimal knots. In particular we show the existence of…

We study a subset of square free positive braids and we give a few algebraic characterizations of them and one geometric characterization: the set of positive braids whose closures are unlinks. We describe canonical forms of these braids…

We give a new upper bound on the maximum degree of the Jones polynomial of a fibered positive link. In particular, we prove that the maximum degree of the Jones polynomial of a fibered positive knot is at most four times the minimum degree.…

We study balancedness properties of words given by the Arnoux-Rauzy and Brun multi-dimensional continued fraction algorithms. We show that almost all Brun words on 3 letters and Arnoux-Rauzy words over arbitrary alphabets are finitely…

It is natural to ask how many isotopy classes of embedded essential surfaces lie in a given 3-manifold. The first bounds on the number of such surfaces were exponential, using normal surfaces. More recently, by restricting to alternating…

In this paper we use twisted Alexander polynomials to prove that the exterior of a particular graph knot is not fibered. Then we build three 2-component graph links out of this knot, and use similar techniques to discuss their fiberedness.

We introduce a notion of "quasi-right-veering" for closed braids, which plays an analogous role to "right-veering" for open books. We show that a transverse link $K$ in a contact 3-manifold $(M,\xi)$ is non-loose if and only if every braid…