arXiv subjects
Publications and source records attributed to Takahiro Kitayama.
We introduce the adjoint homological Selmer module for an SL$_2$-representation of a knot group, which may be seen as a knot theoretic analogue of the dual adjoint Selmer module for a Galois representation. We then show finitely generated torsion-ness of our adjoint Selmer module, which are widely known as conjectures in number theory, and give some concrete examples.
A lower bound of the Gordian distance is presented in terms of the Blanchfield pairing. Our approach, in particular, allows us to show at least for 195 pairs of unoriented nontrivial prime knots with up to 10 crossings that their Gordian distance is equal to 3, most of which are difficult to treat otherwise.
We present an overview of the study of the Thurston norm, introduced by W. P. Thurston in the seminal paper "A norm for the homology of 3-manifolds" (written in 1976 and published in 1986). We first review fundamental properties of the Thurston norm of a 3-manifold, including a construction of codimension-1 taut foliations from norm-minimizing embedded surfaces, established by D. Gabai. In the main part we describe relationships between the Thurston norm and other topological invariants of a 3-manifold: the Alexander polynomial and its various generalizations, Reidemeister torsion, the Seiberg-Witten invariant, Heegaard Floer homology, the complexity of triangulations and the profinite completion of the fundamental group. Some conjectures and questions on related topics are also collected. The final version of this paper will appear as a chapter in the book "In the tradition of Thurston, II", edited by K. Ohshika and A. Papadopoulos (Springer, 2022).
We establish homotopy ribbon concordance obstructions coming from the Blanchfield form and Levine-Tristram signatures. Then, as an application of twisted Alexander polynomials, we show that for every knot K with nontrivial Alexander polynomial, there exists an infinite family of knots that are all concordant to K and have the same Blanchfield form as K, such that no pair of knots in that family is homotopy ribbon concordant.
In 1983 Culler and Shalen established a way to construct essential surfaces in a 3-manifold from ideal points of the $SL_2$-character variety associated to the 3-manifold group. We present in this article an analogous construction of certain kinds of branched surfaces (which we call essential tribranched surfaces) from ideal points of the $SL_n$-character variety for a natural number $n$ greater than or equal to 3. Further we verify that such a branched surface induces a nontrivial presentation of the 3-manifold group in terms of the fundamental group of a certain 2-dimensional complex of groups.
We study the twisted knot module for the universal deformation of an ${\rm SL}_2$-representation of a knot group, and introduce an associated $L$-function, which may be seen as an analogue of the algebraic $p$-adic $L$-function associated to the Selmer module for the universal deformation of a Galois representation. We then investigate two problems proposed by Mazur: Firstly we show the torsion property of the twisted knot module over the universal deformation ring under certain conditions. Secondly we verify the simplicity of the zeroes of the $L$-function by some concrete examples for 2-bridge knots.
Extending Culler-Shalen theory, Hara and the second author presented a way to construct certain kinds of branched surfaces in a $3$-manifold from an ideal point of a curve in the $\operatorname{SL}_n$-character variety. There exists an essential surface in some $3$-manifold known to be not detected in the classical $\operatorname{SL}_2$-theory. We prove that every connected essential surface in a $3$-manifold is given by an ideal point of a rational curve in the $\operatorname{SL}_n$-character variety for some $n$.
Twisted Alexander invariants of knots are well-defined up to multiplication of units. We get rid of this multiplicative ambiguity via a combinatorial method and define normalized twisted Alexander invariants. We then show that the invariants coincide with sign-determined Reidemeister torsion in a normalized setting, and refine the duality theorem. We further obtain necessary conditions on the invariants for a knot to be fibered, and study behavior of the highest degrees of the invariants.
The second author and Hara introduced the notion of an essential tribranched surface that is a generalisation of the notion of an essential embedded surface in a 3-manifold. We show that any 3-manifold for which the fundamental group has at least rank four admits an essential tribranched surface.
We study incompressible surfaces constructed by Culler-Shalen theory in the context of twisted Alexander polynomials. For a $1$st cohomology class of a $3$-manifold the coefficients of twisted Alexander polynomials induce regular functions on the $SL_2(\mathbb{C})$-character variety. We prove that if an ideal point gives a Thurston norm minimizing non-separating surface dual to the cohomology class, then the regular function of the highest degree has a finite value at the ideal point.
We introduce non-acyclic $PGL_n(\mathbb{C})$-torsion of a 3-manifold with toroidal boundary as an extension of J. Porti's $PGL_2(\mathbb{C})$-torsion, and present an explicit formula of the $PGL_n(\mathbb{C})$-torsion of a mapping torus for a surface with punctures, by using the higher Teichmüler theory due to V. Fock and A. Goncharov. Our formula gives a concrete rational function which represents the torsion function and comes from a concrete cluster transformation associated with the mapping class.
The coefficients of twisted Alexander polynomials of a knot induce regular functions of the $SL_2(\mathbb{C})$-character variety. We prove that the function of the highest degree has a finite value at an ideal point which gives a minimal genus Seifert surface by Culler-Shalen theory. It implies a partial affirmative answer to a conjecture by Dunfield, Friedl and Jackson.
In 2007 Agol showed that if N is an aspherical compact 3-manifold with empty or toroidal boundary such that its fundamental group is virtually RFRS, then $N$ is virtually fibered. We give a largely self-contained proof of Agol's theorem using complexities of sutured manifolds.
For a fibered knot in the 3-sphere the twisted Alexander polynomial associated to an SL(2,C)-character is known to be monic. It is conjectured that for a nonfibered knot there is a curve component of the SL(2,C)-character variety containing only finitely many characters whose twisted Alexander polynomials are monic, i.e. finiteness of such characters detects fiberedness of knots. In this paper we discuss the existence of a certain curve component which relates to the conjecture when knots have nonmonic Alexander polynomials. We also discuss the similar problem of detecting the knot genus.
We study algebraic structures of certain submonoids of the monoid of homology cylinders over a surface and the homology cobordism groups, using Reidemeister torsion with non-commutative coefficients. The submonoids consist of ones whose natural inclusion maps from the boundary surfaces induce isomorphisms on higher solvable quotients of the fundamental groups. We show that for a surface whose first Betti number is positive, the homology cobordism groups are other enlargements of the mapping class group of the surface than that of ordinary homology cylinders. Furthermore we show that for a surface with boundary whose first Betti number is positive, the submonoids consisting of irreducible ones as 3-manifolds trivially acting on the solvable quotients of the surface group are not finitely generated.
We prove duality theorems for twisted Reidemeister torsions and twisted Alexander polynomials generalizing the results of Turaev. As a corollary we determine the parity of the degrees of twisted Alexander polynomials of 3-manifolds in many cases.
Given a circle-valued Morse function of a closed oriented manifold, we prove that Reidemeister torsion over a non-commutative formal Laurent polynomial ring equals the product of a certain non-commutative Lefschetz-type zeta function and the algebraic torsion of the Novikov complex over the ring. This paper gives a generalization of the result of Hutchings and Lee on abelian coefficients to the case of skew fields. As a consequence we obtain a Morse theoretical and dynamical description of the higher-order Reidemeister torsion.
We study two sorts of actions on the space of conjugacy classes of irreducible $SU_2$-representations of a knot group. One of them is an involution which comes from the algebraic structure of $SU_2$ and the other is the action by the outer automorphism group of the knot group. In particular, we consider them on an 1-dimensional smooth part of the space, which is canonically oriented and metrized via a Reidemeister torsion volume form. As an application we show that the Reidemeister torsion function on the 1-dimensional subspace has symmetry about the metrization.