Immersed 2-knots with essential singularity (Q2315334)

An immersed 2-knot is an immersed 2-sphere in \(\mathbb{R}^4\). A double point singularity \(p\) of an immersed 2-knot \(S\) is called essential if \(S\) is not equivalent to the connected sum of an immersed 2-knot and an unknotted immersed sphere such that the double point singularity \(p\) belongs to the unknotted immersed sphere. Here, an unknotted immersed sphere is the connected sum of several positive standard singular 2-knots and negative standard singular 2-knots. The main result is that for any positive integer \(n\), there exist infinitely many immersed 2-knots with at least \(n\) double point singularities every of which is essential. The authors construct an immersed 2-knot \(K_m\), given by a marked graph diagram for a positive integer \(m\), and show that under a certain condition for \(m\), \(K_m\) has at least one essential double point singularity. The immersed 2-knots in the main result are constructed as the connected sum of \(n\) copies of \(K_m\) with \(m\) satisfying a certain condition. In the proof, the authors calculate the first elementary ideal of the annihilator \(\Lambda\)-submodule \(DH(K_m)\) of \(K_m\), which is equal to the integral torsion part of the Alexander module, where \(\Lambda=\mathbb{Z}[t, t^{-1}]\). Then they use the property that for an immersed 2-knot \(K\), if the dual \(\Lambda\)-module \(DH(K)^*\) is \(\Lambda\)-isomorphic to \(DH(K)\), then the first elementary ideal is symmetric, that is, the ideal is unchanged by replacing \(t\) by \(t^{-1}\). And they give a homology theoretical argument including the second duality theorem.