A Fox-Milnor Theorem for Knots in a Thickened Surface

Abstract

A knot in a thickened surface $K$ is a smooth embedding $K:S^1 \rightarrow \Sigma \times [0,1]$, where $\Sigma$ is a closed, connected, orientable surface. There is a bijective correspondence between knots in $S^2 \times [0,1]$ and knots in $S^3$, so one can view the study of knots in thickened surfaces as an extension of classical knot theory. An immediate question is if other classical definitions, concepts, and results extend or generalize to the study of knots in a thickened surface. One such famous result is the Fox Milnor Theorem, which relates the Alexander polynomials of concordant knots. We prove a Fox Milnor Theorem for concordant knots in a thickened surface by using Milnor torsion.