Seifert surfaces distinguished by sutured Floer homology but not its Euler characteristic (Q2261508)

A sutured manifold \((M,\gamma)\) consists of a compact oriented \(3\)-manifold \(M\) with boundary, along with a subset \(\gamma\subset\partial M\) which is a union of annuli \(A(\gamma)\) and tori \(T(\gamma)\). The interior of each component of \(A(\gamma)\) contains a suture, that is, a homologically nontrivial oriented simple closed curve. The pair \((M,\gamma)\) is called balanced if \(M\) has no closed components, \(\chi(R_+(\gamma))=\chi(R_-(\gamma))\), and the inclusion \(A(\gamma) \hookrightarrow \partial M\) induces a surjective map on \(\pi_0\), where \(R_+(\gamma)\) are those components of \(R(\gamma)=\partial M-\text{Int}(\gamma)\) whose normal vectors point out of \(M\) and similarly \(R_-(\gamma)\) are the components of \(R(\gamma)\) with inward pointing normal vectors. The sutured Floer homology group \(SFH(M,\gamma)\) associated to a balanced sutured manifold \((M,\gamma)\) is a direct sum of groups \(SFH(M,\gamma, \mathfrak{s})\), where \(\mathfrak{s}\) ranges through the set of Spin\(^c\)-structures on \((M,\gamma)\). Two surfaces \(R\) and \(R'\) are equivalent if there is an isotopy of \(S^3\) taking \(R\) to \(R'\). Seifert surfaces play an important role in knot theory and low dimensional topology in general. The minimum genus taken over all oriented surfaces that a knot \(K\) bounds is called the genus of \(K\). It is natural to ask whether or not a given minimal genus Seifert surface for a knot is unique. Fiberedness is a sufficient condition for which its minimal genus Seifert surface is unique. However, there are many examples of knots with non-isotopic Seifert surfaces. In this paper, the author finds a family of knots with trivial Alexander polynomial, and constructs two non-isotopic Seifert surfaces for each member in this family. The main result of the paper states that if \(P(K_1,K_2)\) is the knot obtained by plumbing two annuli with arbitrary knots \(K_1\) and \(K_2\), then changing the plumbing results in the same knot, but two inequivalent Seifert surfaces \(R\) and \(R'\). In order to distinguish the surfaces, the author uses the sutured Floer homology invariants of the sutured manifolds obtained by cutting the knot complements along the Seifert surfaces. Moreover, the author presents examples of Seifert surfaces that cannot be distinguished by using only Euler characteristics but by using the sutured Floer homologies.