Convex ribbon disks, quasipositivity, and Lagrangian sliceness
We introduce a version of convex surface theory for immersed ribbon surfaces with Legendrian boundary. As an application, we establish a special case of K3: Problem 1.70 on sharpness in the slice-Bennequin inequality implying quasipositivity, and a special case of a conjecture of Cornwell, Ng, and Sivek on characterizing Lagrangian sliceness. Specifically, we prove that if $K$ is a knot that bounds a "star-shaped" ribbon disk and satisfies $\overline{\mathrm{sl}}(K) = -1$ (resp.\ $\overline{\mathrm{tb}}(K) = -1$), then $K$ is quasipositive (resp.\ Lagrangian slice). In fact, we prove these statements for any fixed transverse (resp.\ Legendrian) representative.
Authors
- Joseph Breen (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0009-0001-7794-7206)
- Alexander Zupan (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4141-1087)
Publication Details
- Journal
- arXiv (Cornell University)
- Published
- 2026-11-03
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.48550/arxiv.2611.05331
- Primary Topic
- Geometric and Algebraic Topology
- Type
- preprint