On classical upper bounds for slice genera (Q1618287)

The authors introduce a new link invariant called the algebraic genus. They relate this invariant to some other link invariants derived from the Seifert form, the Blanchfield form, knot genera and unknotting. In particular, this invariant gives an upper bound for the integral version of the slice genus invariant (\(\mathbb{Z}\)-slice genus) proposed in this paper which is clearly an upper bound for the topological slice genus of links. Moreover, they discuss two questions and conjecture that they have a positive answer. The goal of these two questions is to give a better understanding of this new link invariant. The first one is concerned with the equality between this invariant and \(\mathbb{Z}\)-slice genus of any link. This will imply that this new link invariant is classical, i.e. it depends only on the \(S\)-equivalence class of Seifert matrices. The second one is concerned with the optimality of this invariant as an upper bound for the topological slice genus determined by the \(S\)-equivalence class of Seifert matrices.