Cosmetic two-strand twists on fibered knots

DOI10.1112/TOPO.12164MaRDI QIDQ5126435zbMATH OpenOpenAlexFDO

Authors Carson Rogers

Publication date 16 October 2020

Published in Journal of Topology (Search for Journal in Brave)

Full work available at URL https://arxiv.org/abs/1908.05701

zbMATH Keywords

branched coveringfibered knotgeneralized crossing changerational homology sphere

Mathematics Subject Classification ID

Knot theory (57K10) Other geometric structures on 3-manifolds (57K35) Low-dimensional topology of special (e.g., branched) coverings (57M12) General low-dimensional topology (57M99)

Abstract: Let $K$ be a knot in a rational homology sphere $M$. This paper investigates the question of when modifying $K$ by adding $m>0$ half-twists to two oppositely-oriented strands, while keeping the rest of $K$ fixed, produces a knot isotopic to $K$. Such a two-strand twist of order $m$, as we define it, is a generalized crossing change when $m$ is even and a non-coherent band surgery when $m=1$. A cosmetic two-strand twist on $K$ is a non-nugatory one that produces an isotopic knot. We prove that fibered knots in $M$ admit no cosmetic generalized crossing changes. Further, we show that if $K$ is fibered, then a two-strand twist of odd order $m$ that is determined by a separating arc in a fiber surface for $K$ can only be cosmetic if $m=pm1$. After proving these theorems, we further investigate cosmetic two-strand twists of odd orders. Through two examples, we find that the second theorem above becomes false if `separating' is removed, and that a key technical proposition fails when the order equals 1. A closer look at an order-one example, an instance of cosmetic band surgery on the unknot, reveals it to be nearly trivial in a sense that we name `weakly nugatory'. We correct the technical proposition to obtain a means of using double branched covers to show that certain band surgeries are weakly nugatory. As an application, we prove that every cosmetic band surgery on the unknot is of this type.

Recommendations

• Two-bridge knots admit no purely cosmetic surgeries
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Cited in

(11)

• Fiber braids and knots
• Upper bounds in the theory of unknotting operations
• An obstruction of Gordian distance one and cosmetic crossings for genus one knots
• The cosmetic crossing conjecture for split links
• Cosmetic crossing changes of fibered knots
• Cosmetic surgery in L-spaces and nugatory crossings
• Cosmetic crossings and Seifert matrices
• Cosmetic crossing conjecture for genus one knots with non-trivial Alexander polynomial
• Generalized crossing changes in satellite knots
• On the cosmetic crossing conjecture for special alternating links
• Two strand twisting

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