English

Bridge trisections and Seifert solids

Geometric Topology 2025-07-02 v1

Abstract

We adapt Seifert's algorithm for classical knots and links to the setting of tri-plane diagrams for bridge trisected surfaces in the 4-sphere. Our approach allows for the construction of a Seifert solid that is described by a Heegaard diagram. The Seifert solids produced can be assumed to have exteriors that can be built without 3-handles; in contrast, we give examples of Seifert solids (not coming from our construction) whose exteriors require arbitrarily many 3-handles. We conclude with two classification results. The first shows that surfaces admitting doubly-standard shadow diagrams are unknotted. The second says that a bb-bridge trisection in which some sector contains at least b1b-1 patches is completely decomposable, thus the corresponding surface is unknotted. This settles affirmatively a conjecture of the second and fourth authors.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2210.09669,
  title  = {Bridge trisections and Seifert solids},
  author = {Jason Joseph and Jeffrey Meier and Maggie Miller and Alexander Zupan},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2210.09669},
  year   = {2025}
}

Comments

23 pages, 6 figures; v1 of arXiv:2112.11557 has been divided into two papers: v2, to be posted simultaneously, and the present article, which adds an expanded discussion of Seifert solids

R2 v1 2026-06-28T03:53:44.126Z