Ascent concordance (Q2059709)

The notion of ascent concordance of links in thickened surfaces is inspired by the idea of ribbon concordance of links in \(S^3\). Two links in \(S^3\) being concordant but not ribbon concordant means that while they are concordant, any concordance between them will have to be somehow ``complicated.'' Similarly, two links being ascent concordant means that the ambient space in which any concordance lives must be ``complicated.'' Let \(K_1\subseteq \Sigma_{g_1}\times[0,1]\) and \(K_2\subseteq \Sigma_{g_2}\times[0,1]\) be links in thickened surfaces of genera \(g_1\) and \(g_2\). A cobordism between \(K_1\) and \(K_2\) consists of a 3-manifold cobordism \(M\) from \(\Sigma_{g_1}\) to \(\Sigma_{g_2}\) together with a surface \(S\) smoothly embedded in \(M\times[0,1]\) bounded by \(K_1\) and (the reverse of the mirror image of) \(K_2\). If \(S\) is a disjoint union of annuli each of which is bounded by a component of \(K\) and a component of \(J\), then \((S,M)\) is called a concordance. Given a concordance \((S,M)\), let \(f:M\to[0,1]\) be a Morse function chosen so that \(S\) intersects \(f^{-1}(t)\times[0,1]\) transversely for every regular value \(t\) of \(f\). If every level surface of \(f\) has genus no larger than the larger of \(g_1\) and \(g_2\), then \((S,M)\) is a descent concordance. Two links that are concordant but not descent concordant are called ascent concordant. The idea is that the genera of the level surfaces of the ambient space \(M\) containing the concordance must ascend. The main result of the paper is the existence of an infinite family of pairwise ascent concordant links in thickened surfaces. Noteworthily, they produce some examples in which the ambient 3-manifold cobordism \(M\) is \(\Sigma\times[0,1]\), with a Morse function different from the obvious one. The tool used to prove this result is totally reduced Khovonov homology [\textit{V. O. Manturov} and \textit{W. Rushworth}, J. Knot Theory Ramifications 27, No. 9, Article ID 1842001, 25 p. (2018; Zbl 1400.57009)], \(DKh''(D,\gamma)\). This homology theory takes as its arguments a diagram link diagram \(D\) in a surface \(\Sigma\) together with \(\gamma\in H^1(\Sigma, \mathbb{Z}_2)\). While \(DKh''(D,\gamma)\) is not invariant under concordance, its behavior under specific types of concordances with particularly simple Morse functions is studied to produce a condition (Theorem 4.7) which obstructs the existence of a descent concordance. In Section 4, this condition is used to generate examples of ascent concordant links.