arXiv research

Maximum Levine-Tristram signature of torus knots follows a reduction formula.

Paper confirms Kashaev's signature conjecture for links.

Study on signatures of positive braids with bounds derived.

We determine for which complex numbers on the unit circle the Levine-Tristram signature and the nullity give rise to link concordance invariants.

New invariant for knotted tori, similar to classical invariant.

The Kashaev conjecture is proven for classical signatures and Alexander polynomials of links.

The Levine-Tristram signature associates to each oriented link $L$ in $S^3$ a function $σ_L \colon S^1 \to \mathbb{Z}.$ This invariant can be defined in a variety of ways, and its numerous applications include the study of unlinking numbers and link concordance. In this survey, we recall the three and four dimensional …

Extends a formula for the homomorphism defect of a signature map to coloured braids.

A new method computes link invariants from diagrams.

New formulas estimate link signatures near 1.

We give a new proof that the Levine-Tristram signatures of a link give lower bounds for the minimal sum of the genera of a collection of oriented, locally flat, disjointly embedded surfaces that the link can bound in the 4-ball. We call this minimal sum the 4-genus of the link. We also extend a theorem of Cochran, Frie…

In this paper, we use `generalized Seifert surfaces' to extend the Levine-Tristram signature to colored links in S^3. This yields an integral valued function on the m-dimensional torus, where m is the number of colors of the link. The case m=1 corresponds to the Levine-Tristram signature. We show that many remarkable p…

Study knots that divide ribbon knotted surfaces, computing their half ribbon genus and fusion number.

We use purely topological methods to prove the semicontinuity of the mod 2 spectrum of local isolated hypersurface singularities in $\mathbb{C}^{n+1}$, using Seifert forms of high-dimensional non-spherical links, the Levine--Tristram signatures and the generalized Murasugi--Kawauchi inequality obtained in earlier work …

In [BF12] the authors associated to a knot K an invariant n_R(K) which is defined using the Blanchfield form and which gives a lower bound on the unknotting number. In this paper we express n_R(K) in terms of Levine-Tristram signatures and nullities of K. In the proof we also show that the Blanchfield form with real co…

Given a rational homology sphere which bounds rational homology balls, we investigate the complexity of these balls as measured by the number of 1-handles in a handle decomposition. We use Casson-Gordon invariants to obtain lower bounds which also lead to lower bounds on the fusion number of ribbon knots. We use Levine…

A knot K is called Gordian adjacent to a knot L if there exists an unknotting sequence for L containing K. We provide a sufficient condition for Gordian adjacency of torus knots via the study of knots in the thickened torus. We also completely describe Gordian adjacency for torus knots of index 2 and 3 using Levine-Tri…

We use Morse theoretical arguments to study algebraic curves in C^2. We take an algebraic curve C in C^2 and intersect it with a family of spheres with fixed origin and varying radii. We explain in detail how does the resulting link change when we cross a singular point of C. Applying link invariants as Murasugi's sign…

Study shows knots with similar Blanchfield forms can be homotopy ribbon concordant.

Given a knot K we introduce a new invariant coming from the Blanchfield pairing and we show that it gives a lower bound on the unknotting number of K. This lower bound subsumes the lower bounds given by the Levine-Tristram signatures, by the Nakanishi index and it also subsumes the Lickorish obstruction to the unknotti…

We use topological methods to prove a semicontinuity property of the Hodge spectra for analytic germs defined on an isolated surface singularity. For this we introduce an analogue of the Seifert matrix (the fractured Seifert matrix), and of the Levine--Tristram signatures associated with it, defined for null-homologous…

We compute the Heegaard Floer homology of $S^3_1(K)$ (the (+1) surgery on the torus knot $T_{p,q}$) in terms of the semigroup generated by $p$ and $q$, and we find a compact formula (involving Dedekind sums) for the corresponding Ozsvath--Szabo d-invariant. We relate the result to known knot invariants of $T_{p,q}$ as …

We use Ozsváth, Stipsicz, and Szabó's Upsilon-invariant to provide bounds on cobordisms between knots that `contain full-twists'. In particular, we recover and generalize a classical consequence of the Morton-Franks-Williams inequality for knots: positive braids that contain a positive full-twist realize the braid inde…

This paper studies twisted signature invariants and twisted linking forms, with a view towards obstructions to knot concordance. Given a knot $K$ and a representation $ρ$ of the knot group, we define a twisted signature function $σ_{K,ρ} \colon S^1 \to \mathbb{Z}$. This invariant satisfies many of the same algebraic pr…

New complexity measure for shake-slice knots established.

The paper studies twisted signature invariants of fibered knots and 3-manifolds.

We define a family of formal Khovanov brackets of a colored link depending on two parameters. The isomorphism classes of these brackets are invariants of framed colored links. The Bar-Natan functors applied to these brackets produce Khovanov and Lee homology theories categorifying the colored Jones polynomial. Further,…

New Arf invariants for colored links determined by linking numbers.

We study the cobordism of manifolds with boundary, and its applications to codimension 2 embeddings $M^m\subset N^{m+2}$, using the method of the algebraic theory of surgery. The first main result is a splitting theorem for cobordisms of algebraic Poincaré pairs, which is then applied to describe the behaviour on the c…

New lower bound for knot genus using Links-Gould invariant.

Extended signatures help distinguish non-concordant links.

To a Seifert matrix of a knot K one can associate a matrix w(K) with entries in the rational function field, Q(t). The Murasugi, Milnor, and Levine-Tristram knot signatures, all of which provide bounds on the 4-genus of a knot, are determined by w(K). More generally, the minimal rank of a representative of the class re…

New unoriented algebraic concordance group defined using mock Seifert matrices.

Given a link L in the 3-sphere, we ask whether the components of L bound disjoint, nullhomologous disks properly embedded in a simply-connected positive-definite smooth 4-manifold; the knot case has been studied extensively in work of Cochran-Harvey-Horn. Such a 4-manifold is necessarily homeomorphic to a (punctured) c…