English

Homotopy ribbon discs with a fixed group

Geometric Topology 2024-12-25 v3

Abstract

In the topological category, the classification of homotopy ribbon discs is known when the fundamental group GG of the exterior is Z\mathbb{Z} and the Baumslag-Solitar group BS(1,2)BS(1,2). We prove that if a group GG is geometrically 22-dimensional and satisfies the Farrell-Jones conjecture, then a condition involving the fundamental group ensures that exteriors of aspherical homotopy ribbon discs with fundamental group GG are s-cobordant rel.\ boundary. When GG is good, this leads to the classification of such discs. As an application, for any knot JS3J \subset S^3 whose knot group G(J)G(J) is good, we classify the homotopy ribbon discs for J#JJ \# -J whose complement has group G(J)G(J). A similar application is obtained for BS(m,n)BS(m,n) when mn=1|m-n|=1.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2201.04465,
  title  = {Homotopy ribbon discs with a fixed group},
  author = {Anthony Conway},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2201.04465},
  year   = {2024}
}

Comments

9 pages, 1 figure. v2: minor modifications made to the introduction to emphasise which results hold regardless of whether the group $G$ is good. v3: Further improvements, corrected some inaccuracies that had appeared in v2; to appear in AGT

R2 v1 2026-06-24T08:47:42.415Z