On sutured Floer homology and the equivalence of Seifert surfaces (Q1941816)

In this paper, the authors show how to use \textit{sutured Floer homology} of Seifert surface complements [\textit{A. Juhász}, Algebr. Geom. Topol. 6, 1429--1457 (2006; Zbl 1129.57039)], along with more classical information contained in the Seifert form, to distinguish inequivalent minimal genus Seifert surfaces for knots in the \(3\)-sphere. The authors note that while the sutured Floer homology of the Seifert surface complement may be enough to distinguish Seifert surfaces whose complements are non-homeomorphic as \textit{sutured} manifolds, there do exist examples of inequivalent Seifert surfaces \(R_1\) and \(R_2\) (i.e., there is no orientation-preserving self-homeomorphism of \(S^3\) taking \(R_1\) to \(R_2\)) whose sutured complements are nevertheless homeomorphic. For these, it is necessary to use additional information coming from the Seifert form. Along the way, the authors give a nice algorithm for constructing a Heegaard diagram for the sutured complement of a Seifert surface, \(R\), of a knot \(K\) in any (compact, connected, oriented) \(3\)-manifold \(Y\). They proceed by first constructing a Heegaard diagram for \(Y\) which contains \(R\) as an imbedded, proper subsurface, then altering the diagram so that it is also a \(2n\)-pointed Heegaard diagram compatible with the knot \(K\). Previous work of the second author [\textit{A. Juhász}, Geom. Topol. 12, No. 1, 299--350 (2008; Zbl 1167.57005)] then tells us both how to produce a Heegaard diagram for the sutured complement of \(R\) and how to relate the sutured Floer homology of the knot complement to the sutured Floer homology of the Seifert surface complement. The article contains a quite detailed calculation for two inequivalent Seifert surfaces associated to the knot \(8_3\). These details should be quite useful for those interested in using the obstructions developed in the paper on other examples.