Equivariant knots and knot Floer homology

Abstract

AbstractWe define several equivariant concordance invariants using knot Floer homology. We show that our invariants provide a lower bound for the equivariant slice genus and use this to give a family of strongly invertible slice knots whose equivariant slice genus grows arbitrarily large, answering a question of Boyle and Issa. We also apply our formalism to several seemingly nonequivariant questions. In particular, we show that knot Floer homology can be used to detect exotic pairs of slice disks, recovering an example due to Hayden, and extend a result due to Miller and Powell regarding stabilization distance. Our formalism suggests a possible route toward establishing the noncommutativity of the equivariant concordance group.