Lagrangians for the Gopakumar-Vafa conjecture

This article explains how to construct immersed Lagrangian submanifolds in C^2 that are asymptotic at large distance from the origin to a given braid in the 3-sphere. The self-intersections of the Lagrangians are related to the crossings of the braid. These Lagrangians are then used to construct immersed Lagrangians in the vector bundle O(-1) oplus O(-1) over the Riemann sphere which are asymptotic at large distance from the zero section to braids.Comment: This is the version published by Geometry & Topology Monographs on 22 April 200