A 4-dimensional rational genus bound

Abstract We introduce a 4-dimensional analogue of the rational Seifert genus of a knot $$K\subset Y$$ <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"> <mml:mrow> <mml:mi>K</mml:mi> <mml:mo>⊂</mml:mo> <mml:mi>Y</mml:mi> </mml:mrow> </mml:math> , which we call the rational slice genus , that measures the complexity of a homology class in $$H_2(Y\times [0,1],K;\mathbb {Q})$$ <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"> <mml:mrow> <mml:msub> <mml:mi>H</mml:mi> <mml:mn>2</mml:mn> </mml:msub> <mml:mrow> <mml:mo>(</mml:mo> <mml:mi>Y</mml:mi> <mml:mo>×</mml:mo> <mml:mrow> <mml:mo>[</mml:mo> <mml:mn>0</mml:mn> <mml:mo>,</mml:mo> <mml:mn>1</mml:mn> <mml:mo>]</mml:mo> </mml:mrow> <mml:mo>,</mml:mo> <mml:mi>K</mml:mi> <mml:mo>;</mml:mo> <mml:mi>Q</mml:mi> <mml:mo>)</mml:mo> </mml:mrow> </mml:mrow> </mml:math> . Our main theorem is a lower bound for the rational slice genus of a knot in terms of its Heegaard Floer $$\tau $$ <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"> <mml:mi>τ</mml:mi> </mml:math> invariants. To prove this, we bound the $$\tau $$ <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"> <mml:mi>τ</mml:mi> </mml:math> invariants of any satellite link whose pattern is a closed braid in terms of the $$\tau $$ <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"> <mml:mi>τ</mml:mi> </mml:math> invariants of the companion knot, a result which should be of independent value. Our techniques also produce rational PL slice genus bounds. As applications, we use our bounds to prove that Floer simple knots have rational slice genus equal to their rational Seifert genus. We also show that there exist sequences of knots in a fixed 3-manifold whose PL slice genus is unbounded. In addition, we produce stronger bounds for the slice genus of knots relative to the rational longitude, and use these to produce a rational slice-Bennequin bound for knots in contact manifolds with non-trivial contact invariant.