arXiv research

Legendrian Lavrentiev links are shown to be equivalent to smooth links.

We introduce a topological combinatorial game called the Link Smoothing Game. The game is played on the shadow of a link diagram and legal moves consist of smoothing precrossings. One player's goal is to keep the diagram connected while the other player's goal is to disconnect the shadow. We make significant progress t…

Kervaire's sphere-link is equivalent to a ribbon sphere-link, simplifying complex 2-complexes.

The surgery unknotting number of a Legendrian link is defined as the minimal number of particular oriented surgeries that are required to convert the link into a Legendrian unknot. Lower bounds for the surgery unknotting number are given in terms of classical invariants of the Legendrian link. The surgery unknotting nu…

Study symmetries in smoothed polygonal links.

New examples of Calabi-Yau metrics on cones with irregular smooth links.

Flexible links have symplectic representatives in complex projective space.

Study framed links in simply connected 4-manifolds, linking to exotic phenomena.

In this paper, we focus on L-spaces for which the boundary maps of the Heegaard Floer chain complexes vanish. We collect such manifolds systematically by using the smoothing order on links.

We investigate the concordance properties of `parallel links' P(K), given by the (2,0) cable of a knot K. We focus on the question: if P(K) is concordant to a split link, is K necessarily slice? We show that if P(K) is smoothly concordant to a split link, then many smooth concordance invariants of K must vanish, includ…

New invariants derived from link homology for 4-manifolds.

Let $L$ be a fixed link. Given a link diagram $D$, is there a sequence of crossing exchanges and smoothings on $D$ that yields a diagram of $L$? We approach this problem from the computational complexity point of view. It follows from work by Endo, Itoh, and Taniyama that if $L$ is a prime link with crossing number at …

Same-genus Seifert surfaces for non-split alternating links are smoothly isotopic.

We extend the methods of Davis-Januszkiewicz-Lafont to provide a new obstruction to smooth Riemannian metric with non-positive sectional curvature. We construct examples of locally CAT(0) 4-manifolds $M$, whose universal covers satisfy isolated flats condition and contain 2-dimensional flats with the property that $\sq…

Call a smooth knot (or smooth link) in the unit sphere in $\mathbb{C}^2$ analytic (respectively, smoothly analytic) if it bounds a complex curve (respectively, a smooth complex curve) in the complex ball. Let $K$ be a smoothly analytic knot. For a small tubular neighbourhood of $K$ we give a sharp lower bound for the 4…

Formula calculates linking numbers in knot theory.

In the previous paper, we considered a link diagram invariant of Hass and Nowik type using regular smoothing and unknotting number, to estimate the number of Reidemeister moves needed for unlinking. In this paper, we introduce a new link diagram invariant using irregular smoothing, and give an example of a knot diagram…

We focus on L-spaces for which the boundary maps of the Heegaard Floer chain complexes vanish. In previous paper \cite{Usui}, we collect such manifolds systematically by using the smoothing order on links. In this paper, we classify such L-spaces under appropreate constraint.

Study the embedding space of a Hopf link in 3D and 3-manifolds.

The set N of all null geodesics of a globally hyperbolic (d+1)-dimensional spacetime (M,g) is naturally a smooth (2d-1)-dimensional contact manifold. The sky of an event is the subset of N defined by all null geodesics through that event, and is an embedded Legendrian submanifold of N diffeomorphic to a (d-1)-dimension…

Knot lattice homology invariant of smooth knot type in rational homology spheres.

The bipolar filtration introduced by T. Cochran, S. Harvey, and P. Horn is a framework for the study of smooth concordance of topologically slice knots and links. It is known that there are topologically slice 1-bipolar knots which are not 2-bipolar. For knots, this is the highest known level at which the filtration do…

This article is about a natural distance function induced by smooth cobordisms between links. We show that the cobordism distance of torus links is determined by the profiles of their signature functions, up to a constant factor.

Extends Khovanov bracket to link cobordisms, proving functoriality up to scalars.

Classifies Legendrian torus and cable links, revealing symmetries and invariants.

It is proved that every disconnected surface-link with meridian-based free fundamental group is a trivial (i.e., an unknotted-unlinked) surface-link. This result is a surface-link version of the author's recent announcement result on smooth unknotting of a surface-knot.

New polynomial invariants for virtual links are stronger than F-polynomials.

We construct an infinite family of topologically slice 2--component boundary links $\ell_i$, none of which is smoothly concordant to a split link, such that $g_4(\ell_i)=i$.

Study Khovanov homology of Turaev genus one links, finding a trivial summand.

Steinhaus conjectured that every closed oriented $C^1$-curve has a pair of anti-parallel tangents. Porter disproved the conjecture by showing that there exist curves with no anti-parallel tangents. Colin Adams rised the question of whether there exists a nontrivial knot in $\R^3$ which has no parallel or antiparallel t…

We link Ginzburg algebras to Weinstein manifolds and Legendrian knots.

Smoothing graphons improve link prediction in Bayesian SBM without increasing computational complexity.

A projective link is a smooth closed 1-submanifold of the real projective space of dimension three. A projective link is said to be affine if it is isotopic to a link, which does not intersect some projective plane. The main result: a projective link is affine if and only if the fundamental group of its complement cont…

We give characterizations of the skein polynomial for links (as well as Jones and Alexander-Conway polynomials derivable from it), avoiding the usual "smoothing of a crossing" move. As by-products we have characterizations of these polynomials for knots, and for links with any given number of components.

We present a new short proof of the explicit formula for the group of links (and also link maps) in the 'quadruple point free' dimension. Denote by $L^m_{p,q}$ (respectively, $C^{m-p}_p$) the group of smooth embeddings $S^p\sqcup S^q\to S^m$ (respectively, $S^p\to S^m$) up to smooth isotopy. Denote by $LM^m_{p,q}$ the …

It was shown by Jim Davis that a 2-component link with Alexander polynomial one is topologically concordant to the Hopf link. In this paper, we show that there is a 2-component link with Alexander polynomial one that has unknotted components and is not smoothly concordant to the Hopf link, answering a question of Jim D…

We show that only finitely many links in a closed 3-manifold share the same complement, up to twists along discs and annuli. Using the same techniques, we prove that by adding 2-handles on the same link we get only finitely many smooth cobordisms between two given closed 3-manifolds. As a consequence, there are finitel…

Symplectic Khovanov homology is an invariant of oriented links defined by Seidel and Smith and conjectured to be isomorphic to Khovanov homology. I define morphisms (up to a global sign ambiguity) between symplectic Khovanov homology groups, corresponding to isotopy classes of smooth link cobordisms in 4D between a fix…

The paper links set cuspidality to function regularity and flatness.

Graphs can be smoothed or squashed too, study finds.

We use Khovanov-Rozansky gl(N) link homology to define invariants of oriented smooth 4-manifolds, as skein modules constructed from certain 4-categories with well-behaved duals. The technical heart of this construction is a proof of the sweep-around property, which makes these link homologies well defined in the 3-sphe…

Link projections with the same circle arrangement can be transformed by specific moves.

We show that there are links whose individual components are concordant to the unknot, but which are not concordant to any link with unknotted components. We give examples in the topological category, and examples in the smooth category which are topologically slice. We also give generalizations regarding components of…

An immersed concordance between two links is a concordance with possible self-intersections. Given an immersed concordance we construct a smooth four-dimensional cobordism between surgeries on links. By applying $d$-invariant inequalities for this cobordism we obtain inequalities between the $H$-functions of links, whi…

We say that a link $L_1$ is an s-major of a link $L_2$ if any diagram of $L_1$ can be transformed into a diagram of $L_2$ by changing some crossings and smoothing some crossings. This relation is a partial ordering on the set of all prime alternating links. We determine this partial order for all prime alternating knot…

The estimation of probabilities of network edges from the observed adjacency matrix has important applications to predicting missing links and network denoising. It has usually been addressed by estimating the graphon, a function that determines the matrix of edge probabilities, but this is ill-defined without strong a…

Defines concordance for spatial graphs and proves sliceness equivalence.

Solves asymptotic $A_n$-realization problem for curves.