Rectangular diagrams of surfaces: distinguishing Legendrian knots

Abstract

In an earlier paper we introduced rectangular diagrams of surfaces and showed that any isotopy class of a surface in the three-sphere can be presented by a rectangular diagram. Here we study transformations of those diagrams and introduce moves that allow transition between diagrams representing isotopic surfaces. We also introduce more general combinatorial objects called mirror diagrams and various moves for them that can be used to transform presentations of isotopic surfaces to each other. The moves can be divided into two types so that, vaguely speaking, type~I moves commute with type~II ones. This commutation is the matter of the main technical result of the paper. We use it as well as a relation of the moves to Giroux's convex surfaces to propose a new method for distinguishing Legendrian knots. We apply this method to show that two Legendrian knots having topological type $6_2$ are not equivalent. More applications of the method will be a subject of subsequent papers.