Seifert surfaces in the 4-ball

We answer a question of Livingston from 1982 by producing Seifert surfaces of the same genus for a knot in S^{3} that do not become isotopic when their interiors are pushed into B^{4} . In particular, we identify examples where the surfaces are not even topologically isotopic in B^{4} , examples that are topologically but not smoothly isotopic, and examples of infinite families of surfaces that are distinct only up to isotopy rel. boundary. Our main proofs distinguish surfaces using the cobordism maps on Khovanov homology, and our calculations demonstrate the stability and computability of these maps under certain satellite operations.

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Publication Details

Journal
Journal of the European Mathematical Society
Published
2025-09-29
DOI
https://doi.org/10.4171/jems/1703
Citations
1
Primary Topic
Geometric and Algebraic Topology
Type
article
Field-Weighted Citation Impact
4.09
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article

Seifert surfaces in the 4-ball

Isaac Sundberg, Kyle Hayden, Maggie Miller, JungHwan Park
1 citations
Journal of the European Mathematical Society
Geometric and Algebraic Topology
4.09
article

Seifert surfaces in the 4-ball

Isaac Sundberg, Kyle Hayden, Maggie Miller, JungHwan Park
article en
1 citations

Abstract

We answer a question of Livingston from 1982 by producing Seifert surfaces of the same genus for a knot in S^{3} that do not become isotopic when their interiors are pushed into B^{4} . In particular, we identify examples where the surfaces are not even topologically isotopic in B^{4} , examples that are topologically but not smoothly isotopic, and examples of infinite families of surfaces that are distinct only up to isotopy rel. boundary. Our main proofs distinguish surfaces using the cobordism maps on Khovanov homology, and our calculations demonstrate the stability and computability of these maps under certain satellite operations.

Journal of the European Mathematical Society
Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey (US), Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KR), Max Planck Institute for Mathematics (DE), Sungkyunkwan University (KR), The University of Texas at Austin (US)
Openalex Percentile: Top 14%
Geometric and Algebraic Topology
4.09
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Seifert surfaces in the 4-ball — Isaac Sundberg, Kyle Hayden, et al. · Journal of the European Mathematical Society (2025) | TGRS Research Map | TGRS