The cobordism distance between a knot and its reverse
Geometric Topology
2022-08-10 v1
Abstract
The cobordism distance between knots, d(K,J), equals the four-genus g_4(K # -J). We consider d(K,K^r), where K^r is the reverse of K. It is elementary that 0 \le d(K,K^r) \le 2g_4(K) and it is known that there are knots K for which d(K,K^r) is arbitrarily large. Here it is shown that for any knot for which g_4(K) = g_3(K) (such as non-slice knots with g_3(K) = 1 or strongly quasi-positive knots), one has that d(K,K^r) is strictly less that twice g_4(K). It is shown that for arbitrary positive g, there exist knots for which d(K,K^r) = g = g_4(K). There are no known examples for which d(K,K^r) > g_4(K).
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.2011.12287,
title = {The cobordism distance between a knot and its reverse},
author = {Charles Livingston},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2011.12287},
year = {2022}
}
Comments
6 pages, 2 figures