Triple point cancelling numbers of surface links and quandle cocycle invariants (Q2502936)

A surface knot (connected) or a surface link in 4-space is unknotted if it bounds a handlebody or is the split union of unknotted surface knots, respectively. A surface link is pseudo-ribbon if it has a diagram without triple points. Attaching suitable 1-handles makes any surface link unknotted or pseudo-ribbon, and the minimal number of such handles necessary is the unknotting number or the triple point cancelling number, respectively. In recent decades, quandle colorings and quandle cocycle invariants have been developed to study surface links. This theory is used and extended here to find lower bounds for the above surface embedding invariants.