The Casson-Gordon invariant and link concordance (Q1208244)

A theory of Casson-Gordon invariants for smooth links in \(S^{2n + 1}\), \(n \geq 1\), is developed. First the invariant \(\tau\) is defined for a knot \(S^{2n-1}\) in \(S^{2n + 1}\) using \(q\)-fold covers, \(q\) a prime power. This is applied to a certain family of links which are shown to be not concordant to boundary links. In the course of this a general algorithm is presented for computing certain Casson-Gordon invariants. Section 4 is devoted to the classical case in \(S^ 3\), \(n = 1\). Again the invariants are used to prove certain links not to be concordant to boundary links. (All examples have vanishing Milnor \(\overline{\mu}\)- invariants.) In section 5 to each 2-component link in \(S^ 3\) with vanishing linking number an element of a certain group \(\psi\) is assigned. This group and a subgroup corresponding to boundary links can again be used to detect links not concordant to boundary links. So can Casson-Gordon invariants for high dimensional links which are defined in the last section.