Grope cobordism of classical knots. (Q1420504)

A grope of depth \(n\) is defined as a two-complex constructed from once-punctured surfaces as follows. A grope of depth one is a special case and it is just a circle. A grope of depth two is a punctured surface. A grope of depth \(n\) is obtained from a once-punctured surface \(F\) (bottom) and gropes \(\{G_{i}\}\) of depth less than \(n\) by attaching each boundary circle of \(G_{i}\) to a circle on \(F\) representing an element of the symplectic basis of \(H_{1}(F)\). A circle in a symplectic basis with no grope of depth greater than one attached is called a tip. If we attach a disk to each tip, the resulting grope is called a capped grope. We also allow (capped) gropes with more boundary components, which are obtained from (capped) gropes by removing open disks in the bottom. The concept of grope was introduced by \textit{J. W. Cannon} [Bull. Am. Math. Soc. 84, 832--866 (1978; Zbl 0418.57005)] and it corresponds to the lower central series of the fundamental group of a space, that is, a continuous map \(\phi:{S}^{1}\to{X}\) represents an element in the \(k\)th term of the lower central series of \(\pi_{1}(X)\) if and only if \(\phi\) extends to a continuous map of a grope of class \(k\) into \(X\), where the class of a grope is the number of surfaces plus one in it if the grope consists of genus one surfaces. Now we consider knots in an oriented three-manifold \(M\). Two knots \(K_{1}\) and \(K_{2}\) in \(M\) are called \textit{grope cobordant of class \(c\)} if there is an embedding of a grope \(G\) with class bigger than or equal to \(c\) such that the boundary of \(G\) represents the knot types \(K_{1}\) and \(K_{2}\). (These two knots may link). They are called capped grope cobordant of class \(c\) if there is a grope cobordism of class \(c\) with disjointly embedded caps, where the caps may intersect with other part of the grope. The aim of this paper is to describe relations of grope cobordism to the clasper theory of \textit{K.~Habiro} [Geom. Topol. 4, 1--83 (2000; Zbl 0941.57015)] and thus to finite type invariants. In particular the authors show that two oriented knots are capped grope cobordant of class \(c\) if and only if they share the same finite type invariant of type less than \(c\). Other relations to the clasper theory and applications to knot concordance are also discussed.