arXiv subjects

Marc Kegel

Publications and source records attributed to Marc Kegel.

At least 37 records · Page 2Linked to original sources

arXiv2025

Quasi-alternating surgeries

In this article, we explore phenomena relating to quasi-alternating surgeries on knots, where a quasi-alternating surgery on a knot is a Dehn surgery yielding the double branched cover of a quasi-alternating link. Since the double branched cover of a quasi-alternating link is an L-space, quasi-alternating surgeries are special examples of L-space surgeries. We show that all SnapPy census L-space knots admit quasi-alternating surgeries except for the knots t09847 and o9_30634, neither of which have any quasi-alternating surgeries. In particular, this finishes Dunfield's classification of the L-space knots among all SnapPy census knots. In addition, we show that all asymmetric census L-space knots have exactly two quasi-alternating slopes and that these are consecutive integers. Similar behavior is observed for some of the Baker-Luecke asymmetric L-space knots. We also classify the quasi-alternating surgeries on torus knots and show that the set of formal L-space slopes is either empty or infinite This allows us to give examples of asymmetric formal L-spaces.

math.GT↗

arXiv2025

Contact surgery distance

In this article, we define the contact surgery distance of two contact 3-manifolds $(M,ξ)$ and $(M',ξ')$ as the minimal number of contact surgeries needed to obtain $(M,ξ)$ from $(M',ξ')$. Our main result states that the contact surgery distance between two contact $3$-manifolds is at most $5$ larger than the topological surgery distance between the underlying smooth manifolds. As a byproduct of our proof, we classify the rational homology $3$-spheres on which the $d_3$-invariant of a $2$-plane field already determines its $Γ$-invariant and Euler class.

math.GT↗

arXiv2025

Knots not detected by any trace

The first and last named authors have demonstrated the existence of knots for which every integral slope is non-characterizing. In this short note, we extend this result in two ways. There exists a knot that shares for every integer n the same n-trace with infinitely many mutually distinct knots. Moreover, every knot is concordant to a knot that is not detected by any of its traces.

math.GT↗

arXiv2025

Links have no characterising slopes

We show that there is no analogue of characterising slopes for multi-component links. Concretely, we show that for any ordered link L in S3 with n>1 components and any rational slopes r_1, ..., r_n, there are infinitely many links L_i with non-homeomorphic complements such that the Dehn fillings L(r_1, ..., r_n) and L_i(r_1, ..., r_n) are homeomorphic.

math.GT↗

arXiv2025

Algorithms in 4-manifold topology

We show that there exists an algorithm that takes as input two closed, simply connected, topological 4-manifolds and decides whether or not these 4-manifolds are homeomorphic. In particular, we explain in detail how closed, simply connected, topological 4-manifolds can be naturally represented by a Kirby diagram consisting only of 2-handles. This representation is used as input for our algorithm. Along the way, we develop an algorithm to compute the Kirby-Siebenmann invariant of a closed, simply connected, topological 4-manifold from any of its Kirby diagrams and describe an algorithm that decides whether or not two intersection forms are isometric. In a slightly different direction, we discuss the decidability of the stable classification of smooth manifolds with more general fundamental groups. Here we show that there exists an algorithm that takes as input two closed, oriented, smooth 4-manifolds with fundamental groups isomorphic to a finite group with cyclic Sylow 2-subgroup, an infinite cyclic group, or a group of geometric dimension at most 3 (in the latter case we additionally assume that the universal covers of both 4-manifolds are not spin), and decides whether or not these two 4-manifolds are orientation-preserving stably diffeomorphic.

math.GT↗

arXiv2025

Unique Surgery Descriptions along Knots

We prove that for any non-trivial knot K, infinitely many r-surgeries K(r) along K have a unique surgery description along a knot. Moreover, we show that for any hyperbolic L-space knot K and infinitely many integer slopes n, the manifold K(n) has a unique surgery description. Here we say a 3-manifold M has a unique surgery description along a knot in S^3 if there is a unique pair (K,r) of a knot K and a slope r such that M is orientation-preservingly diffeomorphic to K(r). This generalises the notion of characterising slopes. Conversely, we provide new families of manifolds with several distinct surgery descriptions along knots. More precisely, we construct for every non-zero integer m a knot K_m such that for any integer n, the manifold K_m(m+1/n) can also be obtained by surgery on another knot.

math.GT↗

arXiv2025

Contact surgery numbers of projective spaces

We classify all contact projective spaces with contact surgery number one. In particular, this implies that there exist infinitely many non-isotopic contact structures on the real projective 3-space which cannot be obtained by a single rational contact surgery from the standard tight contact 3-sphere. Large parts of our proofs deal with a detailed analysis of Gompf's $Γ$-invariant of tangential 2-plane fields on 3-manifolds. From our main result we also deduce that the $Γ$-invariant of a tangential 2-plane field on the real projective 3-space only depends on its $d_3$-invariant.

math.GT↗

arXiv2025

Knots that share four surgeries

Distinct knots K, K' can sometimes share a common p/q-framed Dehn surgery. A folk conjecture held that for a fixed pair of knots, this can occur for at most one value of p/q. We disprove this conjecture by constructing pairs of distinct knots K,K' that have common Dehn surgeries for four distinct slopes. We also construct non-isotopic Legendrian knots K,K' that have contactomorphic contact (+1)-and (-1)-surgeries, disproving an analogous conjecture in contact geometry.

math.GT↗

arXiv2025

Two curious strongly invertible L-space knots

We present two examples of strongly invertible L-space knots whose surgeries are never the double branched cover of a Khovanov thin link in the 3-sphere. Consequently, these knots provide counterexamples to a conjectural characterization of strongly invertible L-space knots due to Watson. We also discuss other exceptional properties of these two knots, for example, these two L-space knots have formal semigroups that are actual semigroups.

math.GT↗

arXiv2024

On unknotting fibered positive knots and braids

The unknotting number $u$ and the genus $g$ of braid positive knots are equal, as shown by Rudolph. We prove the stronger statement that any positive braid diagram of a genus $g$ knot contains $g$ crossings, such that changing them produces a diagram of the trivial knot. Then, we turn to unknotting the more general class of fibered positive knots, for which $u = g$ was conjectured by Stoimenow. We prove that the known ways to unknot braid positive knots do not generalize to fibered positive knots. Namely, we prove that there are fibered positive knots that cannot be unknotted optimally along fibered positive knots; there are fibered positive knots that do not arise as trefoil plumbings; and there are positive diagrams of fibered positive knots of genus $g$ that do not contain $g$ crossings, such that changing them produces a diagram of the trivial knot. In fact, we conjecture that one of our examples is a counterexample to Stoimenow's conjecture.

math.GT↗

arXiv2024

Trisecting a 4-dimensional book into three chapters

We describe an algorithm that takes as input an open book decomposition of a closed oriented 4-manifold and outputs an explicit trisection diagram of that 4-manifold. Moreover, a slight variation of this algorithm also works for open books on manifolds with non-empty boundary and for 3-manifold bundles over the circle. We apply this algorithm to several simple open books, demonstrate that it is compatible with various topological constructions, and argue that it generalizes and unifies several previously known constructions.

math.GT↗

arXiv2024

Contact surgery numbers of Sigma(2,3,11) and L(4m+3,4)

We classify all contact structures with contact surgery number one on the Brieskorn sphere Sigma(2,3,11) with both orientations. We conclude that there exist infinitely many non-isotopic contact structures on each of the above manifolds which cannot be obtained by a single rational contact surgery from the standard tight contact 3-sphere. We further prove similar results for some lens spaces: We classify all contact structures with contact surgery number one on lens spaces of the form L(4m+3,4). Along the way, we present an algorithm and a formula for computing the Euler class of a contact structure from a general rational contact surgery description and classify which rational surgeries along Legendrian unknots are tight and which ones are overtwisted.

math.SG↗

arXiv2023

Stein traces and characterizing slopes

We show that there exists an infinite family of pairwise non-isotopic Legendrian knots in the standard contact 3-sphere whose Stein traces are equivalent. This is the first example of such phenomenon. Different constructions are developed in the article, including a contact annulus twist, explicit Weinstein handlebody equivalences, and a discussion on dualizable patterns in the contact setting. These constructions can be used to systematically construct distinct Legendrian knots in the standard contact 3-sphere with contactomorphic (-1)-surgeries and, in many cases, equivalent Stein traces. In addition, we also discuss characterizing slopes and provide results in the opposite direction, i.e. describe cases in which the Stein trace, or the contactomorphism type of an r-surgery, uniquely determines the Legendrian isotopy type.

math.SG↗

arXiv2023

Contact surgery numbers

It is known that any contact 3-manifold can be obtained by rational contact Dehn surgery along a Legendrian link L in the standard tight contact 3-sphere. We define and study various versions of contact surgery numbers, the minimal number of components of a surgery link L describing a given contact 3-manifold under consideration. In the first part of the paper, we relate contact surgery numbers to other invariants in terms of various inequalities. In particular, we show that the contact surgery number of a contact manifold is bounded from above by the topological surgery number of the underlying topological manifold plus three. In the second part, we compute contact surgery numbers of all contact structures on the 3-sphere. Moreover, we completely classify the contact structures with contact surgery number one on $S^1\times S^2$, the Poincaré homology sphere, and the Brieskorn sphere $Σ(2,3,7)$. We conclude that there exist infinitely many non-isotopic contact structures on each of the above manifolds which cannot be obtained by a single rational contact surgery from the standard tight contact $3$-sphere. We further obtain results for the 3-torus and lens spaces. As one ingredient of the proofs of the above results we generalize computations of the homotopical invariants of contact structures to contact surgeries with more general surgery coefficients which might be of independent interest.

math.GT↗

arXiv2023

Non-isotopic transverse tori in Engel manifolds

In every Engel manifold we construct an infinite family of pairwise non-isotopic transverse tori that are all smoothly isotopic. To distinguish the transverse tori in the family we introduce a homological invariant of transverse tori that is similar to the self-linking number for transverse knots in contact 3-manifolds. Analogous results are presented for Legendrian tori in even contact 4-manifolds.

math.GT↗

arXiv2022

The classification of surfaces via normal curves

We present a simple proof of the surface classification theorem using normal curves. This proof is analogous to Kneser's and Milnor's proof of the existence and uniqueness of the prime decomposition of 3-manifolds. In particular, we do not need any invariants from algebraic topology to distinguish surfaces.

math.GT↗

arXiv2022

Contact surgery graphs

We define a graph encoding the structure of contact surgery on contact 3-manifolds and analyze its basic properties and some of its interesting subgraphs.

math.GT↗

arXiv2021

L-space knots with tunnel number >1 by experiment

In Dunfield's catalog of the hyperbolic manifolds in the SnapPy census which are complements of L-space knots in $S^3$, we determine that $22$ have tunnel number $2$ while the remaining all have tunnel number $1$. Notably, these $22$ manifolds contain $9$ asymmetric L-space knot complements. Furthermore, using SnapPy and KLO we find presentations of these $22$ knots as closures of positive braids that realize the Morton-Franks-Williams bound on braid index. The smallest of these has genus $12$ and braid index $4$.

math.GT↗