A note on cabling and \(L\)-space surgeries (Q618738)

An \(L\)-space is a rational homology \(3\)-sphere \(Y\) whose Heegaard-Floer homology \(\widehat{HF}(Y)\) is as small as possible, namely a free abelian group of rank equal to the cardinality of \(H_1(Y;\mathbb{Z})\). A knot \(K\subset S^3\) is called an \(L\)-space knot if there is an integer \(n>0\) such that \(n\)-framed surgery along \(K\) yields an \(L\)-space. The family of \(L\)-spaces includes lens spaces so that torus knots are examples of \(L\)-space knots. \textit{M. Hedden} proved that the \((p,q)\)-cable of a knot \(K\subset S^3\) is an \(L\)-space knot if \(K\) is itself an \(L\)-space knot and \(q/p\geq 2 g(K)-1\), where \(g(K)\) is the Seifert genus of \(K\) [Int. Math. Res. Not. 2009, No.~12, 2248--2274 (2009; Zbl 1172.57008)]. The paper under review proves the converse of this result. The proof needs the concordance invariant \(\tau(K)\in \mathbb{Z}\) of knots \(K\subset S^3\) introduced by \textit{P. Ozsváth} and \textit{Z. Szabó} in [Geom. Topol. 7 (2003; Zbl 1037.57027)].