Surfaces in the 4-disk with the same boundary and fundamental group (Q2183380): Difference between revisions

Let \(D^4\) be standard symplectic 4-disk and \(S^3\) be the boundary of \(D^4\) with standard contact structure. Two distinct symplectic surfaces in \(D^4\) bounded by the same transverse knot can be distinguished by the fundamental groups of their complements. In order to answer the question: ``whether there is a pair of non-isotopic symplectic surfaces in \(D^4\) bounded by the same transversal knot such that complements of these surfaces have isomorphic fundamental groups?'', the author constructs a family \((S_1(n), S_2(n))\), \(n \in \mathbb{Z}_{\ge 0}\), of pairs of symplectic surfaces in \(D^4\) such that for each \(n\): 1) the boundaries of \(S_1(n)\) and \(S_2(n)\) are the same transversal knot up to isotopy in \(S^3\); 2) the fundamental groups of the complements \(D^4 \setminus S_1(n)\) and \(D^4 \setminus S_2(n)\) are isomorphic; 3) double branched covers \(X_1(n)\) and \(X_2(n)\) of \(D^4\) branched along \(S_1(n)\) and \(S_2(n)\) are not homeomorphic, and, therefore, \(S_1(n)\) and \(S_2(n)\) are not isotopic; 4) the boundaries \(\partial S_j(n)\) and \(\partial S_j(n')\), \(j = 1, 2\), are not smoothly isotopic in \(\partial D^4\) if \(n \ne n'\). The proof is based on the theory of braided surfaces (the author reviews elements of this theory in the paper) and uses an example of two braid factorizations of a fixed 3-braid constructed in [\textit{L. Rudolph}, Topology 22, 191--202 (1983; Zbl 0505.57003)]. As a corollary, the author gets the following result on Stein fillings of contact manifolds (see [\textit{B. Ozbagci}, Geom. Topol. Monogr. 19, 73--123 (2015; Zbl 1332.57026)]): ``There is a family of contact 3-manifolds \(\{(M (n), \xi(n))\}\), \(n \in \mathbb{Z}_{\ge 0}\), such that each contact manifold admits two non-homeomorphic Stein fillings \(X_1 (n)\), \(X_2 (n)\) which are simply-connected and have the same homology group but non-isomorphic intersection forms.''