Strong coprimality and strong irreducibility of Alexander polynomials (Q649803)

The paper investigates the notion of strong irreducibility of the Alexander polynomial of knots in the context of the rational concordance group and in relation to the Cochran-Orr-Teichner filtration of the knot concordance group. To discuss the results in more detail, recall the definitions. A polynomial \(f(t)\) with rational coefficients is called strongly irreducible if \(f(t^k)\) is irreducible for all positive integers \(k\). Two polynomials \(f, g\) are called strongly coprime if \(f(t^k)\), \(g(t^l)\) are relatively prime for all positive integers \(k, l\). Recall that a knot is called (topologically) slice if it bounds an embedded locally flat disk in the \(4\)-ball. A knot is \textit{rationally slice} if it bounds a disk in a \(4\)-manifold which is a rational homology \(4\)-ball. The \textit{rational concordance group of knots} [\textit{J. C. Cha}, ``The structure of the rational concordance group of knots'', Mem. Am. Math. Soc. 885, 95 p. (2007; Zbl 1130.57034)] is then defined analogously to the classical knot concordance group. The authors observe that strong irreducibility of the Alexander polynomial serves the same role in the context of the rational knot concordance group as the irreducibility of the Alexander polynomial in the classical case [\textit{J. Levine}, Invariants of knot cobordism. Invent. Math. 8, 98--110 (1969); addendum ibid. 8, 355 (1969; Zbl 0179.52401)]. For example, if two knots have strongly coprime Alexander polynomials then their connected sum is rationally algebraically slice if and only if both knots are. The paper introduces conditions sufficient for strong irreducibility. The authors focus on the example of twist knots and show that their Alexander polynomials are pairwise strongly coprime and that most of them are strongly irreducible. The authors then give an application to the structure of the Cochran-Orr-Teichner filtration of the knot concordance group [\textit{T. D. Cochran, K. E. Orr} and \textit{P. Teichner}, Ann. Math. (2) 157, No. 2, 433--519 (2003; Zbl 1044.57001)]. The paper [\textit{T. D. Cochran, S. Harvey} and \textit{C. Leidy}, Math. Ann. 351, No. 2, 443--508 (2011; Zbl 1234.57004)] showed that certain successive quotients of the filtration are infinite-dimensional. The paper under review uses the results on twist knots, discussed above, to modify the construction of Cochran, Harvey and Leidy to exhibit explicit sets of knots which form infinite-dimensional subspaces of the successive quotients of the filtration.