arXiv research

A Seifert surface for a knot K is called canonical if it can be built by applying Seifert's algorithm to some projection of K. The canonical genus of K is the smallest genus of a surface so obtained. In this paper we show that there is a bound on the volume of a hyperbolic knot which admits a canonical surface of genus…

Let M be a two cusped hyperbolic 3-manifold and let M(r) be the result of r Dehn filling of a fixed cusp of M. We study canonical components of the SL(2,C) character varieties of M(r). We show that the gonality of these sets is bounded, independent of the filling parameter. We also obtain bounds, depending on r, for th…

We describe Milnor open books and Legendrian surgery diagrams for canonical contact structures of links of some rational surface singularities. We also describe an infinite family of Milnor fillable contact 3-manifolds so that the Milnor genus (resp. Milnor norm) is strictly greater than the support genus (resp. suppor…

We show that every canonical Seifert surface is (up to isotopy) given by a knot diagram in which the (open) Seifert disks are pairwise disjoint.

It is a conjecture that the signature of a positive link is bounded below by an increasing function of its negated Euler characteristic. In relation to this conjecture, we apply the generator description for canonical genus to show that the boundedness of the genera of positive knots with given signature can be algorit…

We describe a Lefschetz fibration of genus one on the disk cotangent bundle of any closed orientable surface S. As a corollary, we obtain an explicit genus one open book decomposition adapted to the canonical contact structure on the unit cotangent bundle of S.

A conjecture proposed by J. Tripp in 2002 states that the crossing number of any knot coincides with the canonical genus of its Whitehead double. In the meantime, it has been established that this conjecture is true for a large class of alternating knots including $(2, n)$ torus knots, $2$-bridge knots, algebraic alter…

We show that for an alternating pretzel knot K the canonical genera of its Whitehead doubles W(K) are equal to the crossing number c(K) of K, verifying a conjecture of Tripp in the case of these knots.

Every surface bundle with genus $g$ fiber has a canonical Heegaard splitting of genus $2g+1$. We classify the mapping class groups of such Heegaard splittings in the case when the surface bundle has a sufficiently complicated monodromy map.

We study the canonical metric on a compact Riemann surface of genus at least two. While it is known that the canonical metric is of nonpositive curvature, we show that its Gaussian curvatures are not bounded away from zero nor negative infinity when the surface is close to the compactification divisor of Riemann's modu…

We show that after one stabilization, a strongly irreducible Heegaard splitting of suitably large genus of a graph manifold is isotopic to an amalgamation along a modified version of the system of canonical tori in the JSJ decomposition. As a corollary, two strongly irreducible Heegaard splittings of a graph manifold o…

A Seifert surface F for a knot K is free if the complement of F is a handlebody (i.e., has free fundamental group). The free genus of K is the minimum genus among all free Seifert surfaces for K. In this paper we show that there exist families of hyperbolic knots with arbitrarily large volume, which each have free genu…

Let $X$be a complex hyperelliptic curve of genus two equipped with the canonical metric $ds^2$. We study mean field equations on complex hyperelliptic curves and show that the Gaussian curvature function of $(X,ds^2)$ determines an explicit solution to a mean field equation.

Each ruling of a Legendrian link can be naturally treated as a surface. For knots, the ruling is 2-graded if and only if the surface is orientable. For 2-graded rulings of homogeneous (in particular, alternating) knots, we prove that the genus of this surface is at most the genus of the knot. While this is not true in …

The paper studies finiteness of canonical quotients in Dehn quandles of surfaces.

In our works with Stoimenow, Vdovina and with Byberi, we introduced the virtual canonical genus $g_{vc}(K)$ and the virtual bridge number $vb(K)$ invariants of virtual knots. One can see from the definitions that for an classical knot $K$ the values of these invariants are less or equal than the classical canonical gen…

Non-isotopic Heegaard splittings of non-minimal genus were known previously only for very special 3-manifolds. We show in this paper that they are in fact a wide spread phenomenon in 3-manifold theory: We exhibit a large class of knots and manifolds obtained by Dehn surgery on these knots which admit such splittings. M…

A combinatorial framework classifies genus-one knots and links.

Triple-crossing number bound for knots and links, especially torus knots.

It is known that the minimal degree of the Jones polynomial of a positive knot is equal to its genus, and the minimal coefficient is 1. We extend this result to almost positive links and partly identify the 3 following coefficients for special types of positive links. We also give counterexamples to the Jones polynomia…

Study on algebraic curves' invariants and vanishing criteria.

We show that nontrivial classical pretzel knots L(p,q,r) are hyperbolic with eight exceptions which are torus knots. We find Conway polynomials of n-pretzel links using a new computation tree. As applications, we compute the genera of n-pretzel links using these polynomials and find the basket number of pretzel links b…

This paper presents a new algorithm "A" for constructing Seifert surfaces from n-bridge projections of links. The algorithm produces minimal complexity surfaces for large classes of braids and alternating links. In addition, we consider a family of knots for which the canonical genus is strictly greater than the genus,…

Characterizes quasiconformal homeomorphisms on surfaces.

A virtual knot that has a homologically trivial representative $\mathscr{K}$ in a thickened surface $Σ\times [0,1]$ is said to be an almost classical (AC) knot. $\mathscr{K}$ then bounds a Seifert surface $F\subset Σ\times [0,1]$. Seifert surfaces of AC knots are useful for computing concordance invariants and slice ob…

We describe a procedure for creating infinite families of knots, each having the maximum degree of their HOMFLY polynomial strictly less than twice their canonical genus. These families build upon examples first found by Stoimenow.

We give examples of compact symplectic manifolds with disconnected contact type boundary in dimension $4n$ for any $n\geq 1$. The example is given by a subset of the tangent bundle of a compact quotient of the complex hyperbolic space endowed with the canonical symplectic form plus a generalized magnetic field and its …

For any given integer $r \geq 1$ and a quasitoric braid $β_r=(σ_r^{-ε} σ_{r-1}^ε...$ $σ_{1}^{(-1)^{r}ε})^3$ with $ε=\pm 1$, we prove that the maximum degree in $z$ of the HOMFLYPT polynomial $P_{W_2(\hatβ_r)}(v,z)$ of the doubled link $W_2(\hatβ_r)$ of the closure $\hatβ_r$ is equal to $6r-1$. As an application, we gi…

We construct some canonically defined central extensions of groups of symplectomorphisms. We show that this central extension is nontrivial in the case of a torus of dimension $\ge 6$ and in the case of a two-dimensional surface of genus $\ge 3$.

Projection maps virtual Legendrian knots to classical ones.

In this paper, we prove that we can recover the genus of a closed compact surface $S$ in $\mathbb{R}^3$ from the restriction to a generic line of the Fourier transform of the canonical measure carried by $S$. We also show that the restriction on some line in Minkowski space of the solution of a linear wave equation who…

We prove that, like the Seiberg-Witten monopole homology, the Heegaard Floer homology for a three-manifold determines its Thurston norm. As a consequence, we show that knot Floer homology detects the genus of a knot. This leads to new proofs of certain results previously obtained using Seiberg-Witten monopole Floer hom…

Study character varieties of hyperbolic 3-manifolds using bundle methods.

Let $(X,g)$ be a compact Riemannian manifold with quasi-positive Riemannian scalar curvature. If there exists a complex structure $J$ compatible with $g$, then the canonical bundle $K_X$ is not pseudo-effective and the Kodaira dimension $κ(X,J)=-\infty$. We also introduce the complex Yamabe number $λ_c(X)$ for compact …

The paper studies complex genera and related geometric applications, deriving formulas for multiple zeta values.

Study plane curve singularities to determine vanishing cycles and monodromy groups.

This article introduces a universal moduli space for the set whose archetypal element is a pair that consists of a metric and second fundamental form from a compact, oriented, positive genus minimal surface in some hyperbolic 3-manifold. This moduli space is a smooth, finite dimensional manifold with canonical maps to …

We prove that any link admitting a diagram with a single negative crossing is strongly quasipositive. This answers a question of Stoimenow's in the (strong) positive. As a second main result, we give simple and complete characterizations of link diagrams with quasipositive canonical surface (the surface produced by Sei…

Consider degenerations of Abelian differentials with prescribed number and multiplicity of zeros and poles. Motivated by the theory of limit linear series, we define twisted canonical divisors on pointed nodal curves to study degenerate differentials, give dimension bounds for their moduli spaces, and establish smootha…

As was shown by Harer the second homology of ${\mathbb M}_g$, the moduli space of compact Riemann surfaces of genus $g$, is of rank 1, provided $g \geq 3$. This means a nontrivial second de Rham cohomology class on ${\mathbb M}_g$ is unique up to constant factor. But several canonical 2-forms on the moduli space have b…

In this paper we determine the integral homology and cohomology groups of a closed 4-manifold X obtained as the generalized fibre sum of two closed 4-manifolds M and N along embedded surfaces of genus g and self-intersection zero. If the homologies of the 4-manifolds are torsion free and the surfaces represent indivisi…

We compute both natural and smooth models for the $SL_2(\mathbb C)$ character varieties of the two component double twist links, an infinite family of two-bridge links indexed as $J(k,l)$. For each $J(k,l)$, the component(s) of the character variety containing characters of irreducible representations are birational to…

Study continuous deformations of branched projective structures on surfaces, preserving holonomy and branch points.

In this paper, we give some estimates of the sum of the square norm of the sections of the pluricanonical bundles over a Riemann surface with genus greater than 2 and Gauss curvature (-1). Using these estimate, we give a uniform estimate of the corona problem on Riemann surfaces.

Goldman parametrizes the $\mathrm{PSL}_3(\mathbb{R})$-Hitchin component of a closed oriented hyperbolic surface of genus $g$ by $16g-16$ parameters. Among them, $10g-10$ coordinates are canonical. We prove that the $\mathrm{PSL}_3(\mathbb{R})$-Hitchin component equipped with the Atiyah-Bott-Goldman symplectic form admi…

Canonical maps connect complex structures to Hitchin components.

Knots in circle bundles are uniquely identified by their complements.

The Heegaard genus g of an irreducible closed orientable 3-manifold puts a limit on the number and complexity of the pieces that arise in the Jaco-Shalen-Johannson decomposition of the manifold by its canonical tori. For example, if p of the complementary components are not Seifert fibered, then p < g. This result gene…