Cords and 1-handles attached to surface-knots (Q485095)

A surface-knot is a closed connected surface smoothly embedded in 4-space \(\mathbb{R}^4\). When we have a 1-handle attached to a surface-knot, we can obtain a new surface-knot by surgery along the 1-handle. The knot type of the resulting surface-knot depends on the equivalence class of the 1-handle. Boyle classified 1-handles attached to a surface-knot \(F\) when \(F\) is oriented and 1-handles are orientable with respect to the orientation of \(F\), showing that the equivalence classes of 1-handles correspond to the double cosets of the peripheral subgroup of the knot group of \(F\); see \textit{J. Boyle} [Trans. Am. Math. Soc. 306, No. 2, 475--487 (1988; Zbl 0648.57012)]. The main result is that the author classifies 1-handles attached to a surface-knot \(F\) in Boyle's case and the remaining cases: when \(F\) is oriented and 1-handles are non-orientable with respect to the orientation of \(F\), and when \(F\) is non-orientable. For a 1-handle \(B\) attached to a surface-knot \(F\), a core of \(B\) is an arc properly embedded in \(B\) such that it is a strong deformation retract of \(B\) and it connects two 2-cells forming \(B \cap F\). Cores of 1-handles can be expressed in terms of cords, where a cord attached to a surface-knot \(F\) is a simple arc \(C\) in \(\mathbb{R}^4\) such that \(C \cap F=\partial C \cap F\) and this intersection consists of two distinct points of \(F\). The author shows that the equivalence classes of oriented cords (respectively oriented cords with local orientations at the endpoints) attached to \(F\), correspond to the double cosets of the peripheral subgroup of the knot group \(G(F)\) of \(F\) when \(F\) is oriented (respectively the double cosets of the positive peripheral subgroup of \(G(F)\) when \(F\) is non-orientable). Using this result, the author classifies the equivalence classes of 1-handles, which correspond to the equivalence classes of cords (cords with local orientations at the endpoints) attached to \(F\), when \(F\) is oriented (respectively when \(F\) is non-orientable).