On the Morse-Novikov number for 2-knots (Q1687145)

A 2-knot is a smooth embedding of \(S^2\) into \(S^{4}\). The Morse-Novikov number of a knot \(K\), denoted by \(\mathcal{MN}(K)\), is the minimal number of critical points of a regular Morse map \(f: C_K \to S^1\), where \(C_K\) is the complement of \(K\). The main results are as follows. The authors give lower bounds of \(\mathcal{MN}(K)\) for a 2-knot \(K\) by using the Novikov homology of \(C_K\). The authors introduce the notion of the saddle number \(sd(K)\) of a 2-knot \(K \subset \mathbb{R}^4\) -- the saddle number is the minimal number of saddle points of a generic projection of \(K\) to a line in \(\mathbb{R}^4\) -- and show that \(\mathcal{MN}(K) \leq 2 sd(K)\). A lower bound of \(sd(K)\) follows from the result for \(\mathcal{MN}(K)\). For a classical knot \(K \subset S^3\), we denote by \(S(K)\) the spun knot in \(S^4\) due to Artin. For a classical knot \(K \subset S^3\), \(\mathcal{MN}(S(K)) \leq 2 \mathcal{MN}(K)\); this result is shown for the \(p\)-spun knot \(S_p(K)\) (\(p \geq 1\)). For a classical knot \(K \subset S^3\) with \(\mathcal{MN}(K)=2\), \(\mathcal{MN}(S(K))=4\) and there is a strongly minimal Morse function on \(S^4 \backslash S(K)\). In particular, for a non-fibred classical knot \(K \subset S^3\) with tunnel number 1, \(\mathcal{MN}(S(K))=4\). Further, the authors consider the fibredness of high-dimensional spun knots. They close the paper by giving several open questions. \newline We review several terms. For an \(n\)-knot \(K^n \subset S^{n+2}\) and a natural number \(p\geq 1\), the \(p\)-spun knot \(S_p(K^n)\) is an \((n+p)\)-knot in \(S^{n+p+2}\), constructed from \(K^n\) by the superspinning, a generalization of the Artin construction of spun knots. For a 2-knot \(K\), a Morse map \(f: C_K \to S^1\) is strongly minimal if the number of critical points of index \(i\) is minimal in the class of all regular functions \(C_K \to S^1\), for every \(i=0, \ldots, 4\).