The nonorientable four-genus of knots

We develop obstructions to a knot K in the 3-sphere bounding a smooth punctured Klein bottle in the 4-ball. The simplest of these is based on the linking form of the 2-fold branched cover of the 3-sphere branched over K. Stronger obstructions are based on the Ozsvath-Szabo correction term in Heegaard-Floer homology, along with the G-signature theorem and the Guillou-Marin generalization of Rokhlin's theorem. We also apply Casson-Gordon theory to show that for every n greater than one there exists a knot that does not bound a topologically embedded nonorientable ribbon surface F in the 4-ball with first Betti number less than n.Comment: 20 pages; expository change

A finite generating set for the level 2 mapping class group of a nonorientable surface

We obtain a finite set of generators for the level 2 mapping class group of a closed nonorientable surface of genus $g\ge 3$. This set consists of isotopy classes of Lickorish's Y-homeomorphisms also called crosscap slides.Comment: 13 pages, 3 figure

The Z2\mathbb{Z}_2-genus of Kuratowski minors

A drawing of a graph on a surface is independently even if every pair of nonadjacent edges in the drawing crosses an even number of times. The $\mathbb{Z}_2$-genus of a graph $G$ is the minimum $g$ such that $G$ has an independently even drawing on the orientable surface of genus $g$. An unpublished result by Robertson and Seymour implies that for every $t$, every graph of sufficiently large genus contains as a minor a projective $t\times t$ grid or one of the following so-called $t$-Kuratowski graphs: $K_{3,t}$, or $t$ copies of $K_5$ or $K_{3,3}$ sharing at most $2$ common vertices. We show that the $\mathbb{Z}_2$-genus of graphs in these families is unbounded in $t$; in fact, equal to their genus. Together, this implies that the genus of a graph is bounded from above by a function of its $\mathbb{Z}_2$-genus, solving a problem posed by Schaefer and \v{S}tefankovi\v{c}, and giving an approximate version of the Hanani-Tutte theorem on orientable surfaces. We also obtain an analogous result for Euler genus and Euler $\mathbb{Z}_2$-genus of graphs.Comment: 23 pages, 7 figures; a few references added and correcte

What's wrong with the growth of simple closed geodesics on nonorientable hyperbolic surfaces

A celebrated result of Mirzakhani states that, if $(S,m)$ is a finite area \emph{orientable} hyperbolic surface, then the number of simple closed geodesics of length less than $L$ on $(S,m)$ is asymptotically equivalent to a positive constant times $L^{\dim\mathcal{ML}(S)}$, where $\mathcal{ML}(S)$ denotes the space of measured laminations on $S$. We observed on some explicit examples that this result does not hold for \emph{nonorientable} hyperbolic surfaces. The aim of this article is to explain this surprising phenomenon. Let $(S,m)$ be a finite area \emph{nonorientable} hyperbolic surface. We show that the set of measured laminations with a closed one--sided leaf has a peculiar structure. As a consequence, the action of the mapping class group on the projective space of measured laminations is not minimal. We determine a partial classification of its orbit closures, and we deduce that the number of simple closed geodesics of length less than $L$ on $(S,m)$ is negligible compared to $L^{\dim\mathcal{ML}(S)}$. We extend this result to general multicurves. Then we focus on the geometry of the moduli space. We prove that its Teichm\"uller volume is infinite, and that the Teichm\"uller flow is not ergodic. We also consider a volume form introduced by Norbury. We show that it is the right generalization of the Weil--Petersson volume form. The volume of the moduli space with respect to this volume form is again infinite (as shown by Norbury), but the subset of hyperbolic surfaces whose one--sided geodesics have length at least $\varepsilon>0$ has finite volume. These results suggest that the moduli space of a nonorientable surface looks like an infinite volume geometrically finite orbifold. We discuss this analogy and formulate some conjectures