Immersed disks, slicing numbers and concordance unknotting numbers (Q2396644)

The paper under review examines three knot invariants derived from immersed disks in the \(4\)-ball. For a knot \(K\) in the \(3\)-sphere, there always exists an immersed disk in the \(4\)-ball bounded by \(K\) which has only transverse double points in its interior. The \(4\)-ball crossing number is the minimal number of double points in any such immersed disk. This is clearly a concordance invariant. The slicing number of \(K\) is the minimal number of crossing changes necessary to change \(K\) into a slice knot. Since a slice knot bounds an embedded disk in the \(4\)-ball, the slicing number gives an upper bound for the \(4\)-ball crossing number. It is also well known that the \(4\)-ball crossing number gives an upper bound for the \(4\)-ball genus, and the latter is at least half of the signature of the knot. Finally, the concordance unknotting number of \(K\) is defined to be the minimal unknotting number of any knot concordant to \(K\). Hence the (usual) unknotting number of \(K\) gives an upper bound for the concordance unknotting number. In this paper, the \(4\)-ball crossing number and the slicing number are determined for all prime knots with at most 10 crossings, and the concordance unknotting number is determined for all but 3 knots up to 9 crossings and all but 10 knots with 10 crossings. As another application, the Gordian distance and the concordance Gordian distance are examined for some torus knots. The central argument is the analysis of the \(4\)-manifold bounded by the double branched cover of a knot and its intersection pairing, which involves the Heegaard Floer \(d\)-invariant of the double branched cover.