Floer homology and non-fibered knot detection

We prove for the first time that knot Floer homology and Khovanov homology can detect non-fibered knots and that HOMFLY homology detects infinitely many knots; these theories were previously known to detect a mere six knots, all fibered. These results rely on our main technical theorem, which gives...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: John A. Baldwin, Steven Sivek
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: Cambridge University Press 2025-01-01
Series:Forum of Mathematics, Pi
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Online Access:https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/identifier/S2050508624000283/type/journal_article
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Summary:We prove for the first time that knot Floer homology and Khovanov homology can detect non-fibered knots and that HOMFLY homology detects infinitely many knots; these theories were previously known to detect a mere six knots, all fibered. These results rely on our main technical theorem, which gives a complete classification of genus-1 knots in the 3-sphere whose knot Floer homology in the top Alexander grading is 2-dimensional. We discuss applications of this classification to problems in Dehn surgery which are carried out in two sequels. These include a proof that $0$ -surgery characterizes infinitely many knots, generalizing results of Gabai from his 1987 resolution of the Property R Conjecture.
ISSN:2050-5086