L-spaces and knot traces

John A. Baldwin; Steven Sivek

Home/Archive/arXiv

arXiv · 2501.00914

L-spaces and knot traces

John A. Baldwin·Steven Sivek

View original source ↗Read source document ↗Export metadata ↓

Abstract

There has been a great deal of interest in understanding which knots are characterized by which of their Dehn surgeries. We study a 4-dimensional version of this question: which knots are determined by which of their traces? We prove several results that are in stark contrast with what is known about characterizing surgeries, most notably that the 0-trace detects every L-space knot. Our proof combines tools in Heegaard Floer homology with results about surface homeomorphisms and their dynamics. We also consider nonzero traces, proving for instance that each positive torus knot is determined by its $n$-trace for any $n\leq 0$, whereas no non-positive integer is known to be a characterizing slope for any positive torus knot besides the right-handed trefoil.

Explore related subjects

math.GT

Keep this discovery

Explore connections, maps & timelines

BibTeX RIS

John A. Baldwin, Steven Sivek. 2026-03-13. L-spaces and knot traces. https://arxiv.org/abs/2501.00914

Cite the original work for its findings. Save a collection to share your selection of sources.

KEEP EXPLORING

Related papers

arXiv2026

Chern-Simons invariants and volumes of representations in Nil, Sol, and Euclidean geometries

In this paper, we realize volumes of representations as real-valued Chern-Simons invariants in Nil, Sol, and Euclidean geometries. To this end, we formulate a Chern-Simons invariant of a pair of connections on a principal bundle that need not be trivial. For a connected closed oriented 3-manifold $M$ and a representation $ρ\colonπ_1(M)\to G$ into the identity component $G$ of the isometry group of one of these geometries, we construct an auxiliary connection on the associated flat $G$-bundle. We show that, for a suitably normalized invariant polynomial, the Chern-Simons invariant of the auxiliary and flat connections equals the volume of the representation. For the holonomy representation of a geometric structure, this invariant recovers the Riemannian volume. We also compute the Chern-Simons invariant of the Levi-Civita connection for representative closed manifolds in each of these geometries.

math.GT↗

arXiv2026

Khovanov homology and refined bounds for Gordian distances

From Khovanov homology, we extract a new lower bound for the Gordian distance of knots, which combines and strengthens the previously existing bounds coming from Rasmussen invariants and from torsion invariants. We also improve the bounds for the proper rational Gordian distance.

math.GT↗

arXiv2026

From arcs to curves: quadratic growth of 1-systems

We show that a collection of simple closed curves pairwise intersecting at most once on an orientable surface of Euler characteristic $χ$ has at most $2016|χ|^2+338|χ|$ curves. Up to multiplicative constants, this resolves a thirty-year old problem (see Problem 2.12(b) from the K3 Problem List). Inspired by the work of Przytycki in the setting of arcs, we introduce the concepts of tulips, flowers, and stem systems in order to account for how certain polygons built from pairs of curves in the collection distribute area over the surface.

math.GT↗