The relative Whitney trick and its applications

DOI10.1007/S00029-021-00738-YMaRDI QIDQ2065451zbMATH OpenOpenAlexFDO

Authors Patrick Orson, Junghwan Park, Christopher W. Davis

Publication date 7 January 2022

Published in Selecta Mathematica. New Series (Search for Journal in Brave)

Full work available at URL https://arxiv.org/abs/2104.06449

zbMATH Keywords

freely slice linkhomotopically trivial linklink concordancerelative Whitney trickWhitney towerWhitney trick

Mathematics Subject Classification ID

Knot theory (57K10) Cobordism and concordance in topological manifolds (57N70)

Abstract: We introduce a geometric operation, which we call the relative Whitney trick, that removes a single double point between properly immersed surfaces in a $4$-manifold with boundary. Using the relative Whitney trick we prove that every link in a homology sphere is homotopic to a link that is topologically slice in a contractible topological $4$-manifold. We further prove that any link in a homology sphere is order $k$ Whitney tower concordant to a link in $S^3$ for all $k$. Finally, we explore the minimum Gordian distance from a link in $S^3$ to a homotopically trivial link. Extending this notion to links in homology spheres, we use the relative Whitney trick to make explicit computations for 3-component links and establish bounds in general.

Review text

The topological Whitney trick in 4 dimensions is an operation that removes a pair of oppositely signed transverse intersection points between two locally flat immersed surfaces. In this paper a relative Whitney trick is introduced, which removes a single point of intersection between properly immersed locally flat surfaces in a 4-manifold with boundary. The relative Whitney trick is applied to the study of links in homology 3-spheres. One of the main results shows that every link in a homology sphere \(Y\) is freely homotopic to a freely slice link, that is, to a link that bounds a collection of disjoint locally flat embedded disks in a contractible topological 4-manifold \(X\) bounded by \(Y\). It is a conjecture that every link in a homology sphere \(Y\) is homology concordant to a link in \(S^3\) (the corresponding statement in the smooth category is false). Some evidence is given for this conjecture, for it is shown that if \(L\) is a link in \(Y\), then there is a link \(J\) in \(S^3\) and a simply connected homology cobordism from \(Y\) to \(S^3\) such that the components of \(L\) and \(J\) cobound disjoint immersed annuli in the cobordism. A link \(L \subset Y\) is 4D-homotopically trivial if it bounds disjoint immersed disks in a contractible 4-manifold. The homotopy trivializing number \(n_h(L)\) is defined to be the minimum number of crossing changes required to transform \(L\) into a 4D-homotopically trivial link. It is proved that the number \(n_h(L)\) can be computed by counting the intersections between distinct generically immersed disks bounded by the link in a contractible 4-manifold.

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Cited in

(6)

• Symmetric surgery and boundary link maps
• Rational Whitney tower filtration of links
• Cochran's βi-invariants via twisted Whitney towers
• scientific article; zbMATH DE number 836202 (Why is no real title available?)
• scientific article; zbMATH DE number 2227016 (Why is no real title available?)
• Whitney tower concordance and knots in homology spheres

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