arXiv subjects
Publications and source records attributed to Sucharit Sarkar.
In this short note, we exhibit a draw in the game of Philosopher's Phutball. We construct a position on a 12 x 10 Phutball board from where either player has a drawing strategy, and then generalize it to an m x n board with m-2 >= n >= 10.
These notes provide an introduction to the stable homotopy types in Khovanov theory (due to Lipshitz-Sarkar) and in knot Floer theory (due to Manolescu-Sarkar). They were written following a lecture series given by Sucharit Sarkar at the Renyi Institute during a special semester on "Singularities and low-dimensional topology", organised by the Erdos Center.
Given a link diagram L we construct spectra X^j(L) so that the Khovanov homology Kh^{i,j}(L) is isomorphic to the (reduced) singular cohomology H^i(X^j(L)). The construction of X^j(L) is combinatorial and explicit. We prove that the homotopy type of X^j(L) depends only on the isotopy class of the corresponding link.
We construct a spectral sequence relating the Khovanov homology of a strongly invertible knot to the annular Khovanov homologies of the two natural quotient knots. Using this spectral sequence, we re-prove that Khovanov homology distinguishes certain slice disks. We also give an analogous spectral sequence for the Heegaard Floer homology of the branched double cover.
The aim of this paper is to study the behavior of knot Floer homology under Murasugi sum. We establish a graded version of Ni's isomorphism between the extremal knot Floer homology of Murasugi sum of two links and the tensor product of the extremal knot Floer homology groups of the two summands. We further prove that $τ=g$ for each summand if and only if $τ=g$ holds for the Murasugi sum (with $τ$ and $g$ defined appropriately for multi-component links). Some applications are presented.
We extend the definition of Khovanov-Lee homology to links in connected sums of $S^1 \times S^2$'s, and construct a Rasmussen-type invariant for null-homologous links in these manifolds. For certain links in $S^1 \times S^2$, we compute the invariant by reinterpreting it in terms of Hochschild homology. As applications, we prove inequalities relating the Rasmussen-type invariant to the genus of surfaces with boundary in the following four-manifolds: $B^2 \times S^2$, $S^1 \times B^3$, $\mathbb{CP}^2$, and various connected sums and boundary sums of these. We deduce that Rasmussen's invariant also gives genus bounds for surfaces inside homotopy 4-balls obtained from $B^4$ by Gluck twists. Therefore, it cannot be used to prove that such homotopy 4-balls are non-standard.
In this note we present a combinatorial link invariant that underlies some recent stable homotopy refinements of Khovanov homology of links. The invariant takes the form of a functor between two combinatorial 2-categories, modulo a notion of stable equivalence. We also develop some general properties of such functors.
We review the construction and context of a stable homotopy refinement of Khovanov homology.
O. Plamenevskaya associated to each transverse knot K an element of the Khovanov homology of K. In this paper, we give two refinements of Plamenevskaya's invariant, one valued in Bar-Natan's deformation of the Khovanov complex and another as a cohomotopy element of the Khovanov spectrum. We show that the first of these refinements is invariant under negative flypes and SZ moves; this implies that Plamenevskaya's class is also invariant under these moves. We go on to show that for small-crossing transverse knots K, both refinements are determined by the classical invariants of K.
We construct a mixed invariant of non-orientable surfaces from the Lee and Bar-Natan deformations of Khovanov homology and use it to distinguish pairs of surfaces bounded by the same knot, including some exotic examples.
Given a grid diagram for a knot or link K in $S^3$, we construct a filtered spectrum whose homology is the knot Floer homology of K. We conjecture that the filtered homotopy type of the spectrum is an invariant of K. Our construction does not use holomorphic geometry, but rather builds on the combinatorial definition of grid homology. We inductively define models for the moduli spaces of pseudo-holomorphic strips and disk bubbles, and patch them together into a framed flow category. The inductive step relies on the vanishing of an obstruction class that takes values in a complex of positive domains with partitions.
A well-known conjecture states that for any $l$-component link $L$ in $S^3$, the rank of the knot Floer homology of $L$ (over any field) is less than or equal to $2^{l-1}$ times the rank of the reduced Khovanov homology of $L$. In this paper, we describe a framework that might be used to prove this conjecture. We construct a modified version of Khovanov homology for links with multiple basepoints and show that it mimics the behavior of knot Floer homology. We also introduce a new spectral sequence converging to knot Floer homology whose $E_1$ page is conjecturally isomorphic to our new version of Khovanov homology; this would prove that the conjecture stated above holds over the field $\mathbb{Z}_2$.
We prove that the Khovanov spectra associated to links and tangles are functorial up to homotopy and sign.
For G a Lie group acting on a symplectic manifold $(M,ω)$ preserving a pair of Lagrangians $L_0$, $L_1$, under certain hypotheses not including equivariant transversality we construct a G-equivariant Floer cohomology of $L_0$ and $L_1$.
Extending ideas of Hedden-Ni, we show that the module structure on Khovanov homology detects split links. We also prove an analogue for untwisted Heegaard Floer homology of the branched double cover. Technical results proved along the way include two interpretations of the module structure on untwisted Heegaard Floer homology in terms of twisted Heegaard Floer homology and the fact that the module structure on the reduced Khovanov complex of a link is well-defined up to quasi-isomorphism.
We note that our stable homotopy refinements of Khovanov's arc algebras and tangle invariants induce refinements of Chen-Khovanov and Stroppel's platform algebras and tangle invariants, and discuss the topological Hochschild homology of these refinements.
We correct a mistake regarding almost complex structures on Hilbert schemes of points in surfaces in arXiv:1510.02449. The error does not affect the main results of the paper, and only affects the proofs of invariance of equivariant symplectic Khovanov homology and reduced symplectic Khovanov homology. We give an alternate proof of the invariance of equivariant symplectic Khovanov homology.
In this paper, we give a new construction of a Khovanov homotopy type. We show that this construction gives a space stably homotopy equivalent to the Khovanov homotopy types constructed in [LS14a] and [HKK] and, as a corollary, that those two constructions give equivalent spaces. We show that the construction behaves well with respect to disjoint unions, connected sums and mirrors, verifying several conjectures from [LS14a]. Finally, combining these results with computations from [LS14c] and the refined s-invariant from [LS14b] we obtain new results about the slice genera of certain knots.