arXiv subjects

Carson Rogers

Publications and source records attributed to Carson Rogers.

3 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2020

The genus zero, 3-component fibered links in $S^3$

The open book decompositions of the 3-sphere whose pages are pairs of pants have been fully understood for some time, through the lens of contact geometry. The purpose of this note is to exhibit a purely topological derivation of the classification of such open books, in terms of the links that form their bindings and the corresponding monodromies. We construct all of the links and their pair-of-pants fiber surfaces from the simplest example, a connected sum of two Hopf links, through performing (generalized) Stallings twists. Then, by applying the now-classical theory of genus two Heegaard diagrams in $S^3$, we verify that the monodromies of the links in this family are the only ones corresponding to pair-of-pants open book decompositions of $S^3$.

math.GT↗

arXiv2019

Cosmetic two-strand twists on fibered knots

Let $K$ be a knot in a rational homology sphere $M$. This paper investigates the question of when modifying $K$ by adding $m>0$ half-twists to two oppositely-oriented strands, while keeping the rest of $K$ fixed, produces a knot isotopic to $K$. Such a two-strand twist of order $m$, as we define it, is a generalized crossing change when $m$ is even and a non-coherent band surgery when $m=1$. A cosmetic two-strand twist on $K$ is a non-nugatory one that produces an isotopic knot. We prove that fibered knots in $M$ admit no cosmetic generalized crossing changes. Further, we show that if $K$ is fibered, then a two-strand twist of odd order $m$ that is determined by a separating arc in a fiber surface for $K$ can only be cosmetic if $m=\pm 1$. After proving these theorems, we further investigate cosmetic two-strand twists of odd orders. Through two examples, we find that the second theorem above becomes false if `separating' is removed, and that a key technical proposition fails when the order equals 1. A closer look at an order-one example, an instance of cosmetic band surgery on the unknot, reveals it to be nearly trivial in a sense that we name `weakly nugatory'. We correct the technical proposition to obtain a means of using double branched covers to show that certain band surgeries are weakly nugatory. As an application, we prove that every cosmetic band surgery on the unknot is of this type.

math.GT↗

arXiv2016

Bridge number and twist equivalence of Seifert surfaces

Two Seifert surfaces of links in $S^3$ are said to be twist equivalent if one can be obtained from the other, up to isotopy, by repeatedly performing operations consisting of cutting along an embedded arc, applying a full twist near one copy of the arc, and re-gluing. By using bridge spheres for their boundary links, we provide a new method of distinguishing twist equivalence classes of Seifert surfaces of any given genus. Given a Seifert surface $F$ of a link $L$, we show that the bridge numbers of the boundary links of Seifert surfaces twist equivalent to $F$ are uniformly bounded above by a constant depending only on $F$. By computing this constant in one simple case and applying a result of Pfeuti, we deduce that $b(L)\leq 2g_c(L)+|L|$ for any link $L$ in $S^3$, where $g_c(L)$ denotes the canonical genus of $L$. Various consequences of this inequality are discussed. We then apply the main theorem to show that there are infinitely many distinct twist equivalence classes represented by free, genus one Seifert surfaces, answering a question of Pfeuti in the negative.

math.GT↗