Knot Floer homology detects fibred knots

Ozsv\'ath and Szab\'o conjectured that knot Floer homology detects fibred knots in $S^3$. We will prove this conjecture for null-homologous knots in arbitrary closed 3--manifolds. Namely, if $K$ is a knot in a closed 3--manifold $Y$, $Y-K$ is irreducible, and $\hat{HFK}(Y,K)$ is monic, then $K$ is fibred. The proof relies on previous works due to Gabai, Ozsv\'ath--Szab\'o, Ghiggini and the author. A corollary is that if a knot in $S^3$ admits a lens space surgery, then the knot is fibred.Comment: version 4: incorporates referee's suggestions, to appear in Inventiones Mathematica

Notes on bordered Floer homology

This is a survey of bordered Heegaard Floer homology, an extension of the Heegaard Floer invariant HF-hat to 3-manifolds with boundary. Emphasis is placed on how bordered Heegaard Floer homology can be used for computations.Comment: 73 pages, 29 figures. Based on lectures at the Contact and Symplectic Topology Summer School in Budapest, July 2012. v2: Fixed many small typo

Bordered Floer homology and the spectral sequence of a branched double cover I

Given a link in the three-sphere, Z. Szab\'o and the second author constructed a spectral sequence starting at the Khovanov homology of the link and converging to the Heegaard Floer homology of its branched double-cover. The aim of this paper and its sequel is to explicitly calculate this spectral sequence, using bordered Floer homology. There are two primary ingredients in this computation: an explicit calculation of filtered bimodules associated to Dehn twists and a pairing theorem for polygons. In this paper we give the first ingredient, and so obtain a combinatorial spectral sequence from Khovanov homology to Heegaard Floer homology; in the sequel we show that this spectral sequence agrees with the previously known one.Comment: 45 pages, 16 figures. v2: Published versio

Legendrian knots, transverse knots and combinatorial Floer homology

Using the combinatorial approach to knot Floer homology, we define an invariant for Legendrian knots in the three-sphere, which takes values in link Floer homology. This invariant can be used to also construct an invariant of transverse knots.Comment: 27 pages, 13 figures; v2: Expand and correct discussion of link

Heegaard Floer homology as morphism spaces

In this paper we prove another pairing theorem for bordered Floer homology. Unlike the original pairing theorem, this one is stated in terms of homomorphisms, not tensor products. The present formulation is closer in spirit to the usual TQFT framework, and allows a more direct comparison with Fukaya-categorical constructions. The result also leads to various dualities in bordered Floer homology.Comment: 57 pages, 14 figures; v2: many updates, including changing orientation conventions, which changed the signs in many theorem

Bordered Floer homology and the spectral sequence of a branched double cover II: the spectral sequences agree

Given a link in the three-sphere, Ozsv\'ath and Szab\'o showed that there is a spectral sequence starting at the Khovanov homology of the link and converging to the Heegaard Floer homology of its branched double cover. The aim of this paper is to explicitly calculate this spectral sequence in terms of bordered Floer homology. There are two primary ingredients in this computation: an explicit calculation of bimodules associated to Dehn twists, and a general pairing theorem for polygons. The previous part (arXiv:1011.0499) focuses on computing the bimodules; this part focuses on the pairing theorem for polygons, in order to prove that the spectral sequence constructed in the previous part agrees with the one constructed by Ozsv\'ath and Szab\'o.Comment: 85 pages, 19 figures, v3: Version to appear in Journal of Topolog

Computing HF^ by factoring mapping classes

Bordered Heegaard Floer homology is an invariant for three-manifolds with boundary. In particular, this invariant associates to a handle decomposition of a surface F a differential graded algebra, and to an arc slide between two handle decompositions, a bimodule over the two algebras. In this paper, we describe these bimodules for arc slides explicitly, and then use them to give a combinatorial description of HF^ of a closed three-manifold, as well as the bordered Floer homology of any 3-manifold with boundary.Comment: 106 pages, 46 figure

Localization for Involutions in Floer Cohomology

We consider Lagrangian Floer cohomology for a pair of Lagrangian submanifolds in a symplectic manifold M. Suppose that M carries a symplectic involution, which preserves both submanifolds. Under various topological hypotheses, we prove a localization theorem for Floer cohomology, which implies a Smith-type inequality for the Floer cohomology groups in M and its fixed point set. Two applications to symplectic Khovanov cohomology are included.National Science Foundation (U.S.) (grant DMS-0405516)National Science Foundation (U.S.) (grant DMS-065260)European Research Council (grant ERC-2007-StG-205349

Ricci flow for homogeneous compact models of the universe

Using quaternions, we give a concise derivation of the Ricci tensor for homogeneous spaces with topology of the 3-dimensional sphere. We derive explicit and numerical solutions for the Ricci flow PDE and discuss their properties. In the collapse (or expansion) of these models, the interplay of the various components of the Ricci tensor are studied. We dedicate this paper to honor the work of Josh Goldberg.Comment: 18 pages, 2 figure

Filtrations on the knot contact homology of transverse knots

We construct a new invariant of transverse links in the standard contact structure on R^3. This invariant is a doubly filtered version of the knot contact homology differential graded algebra (DGA) of the link. Here the knot contact homology of a link in R^3 is the Legendrian contact homology DGA of its conormal lift into the unit cotangent bundle S^*R^3 of R^3, and the filtrations are constructed by counting intersections of the holomorphic disks of the DGA differential with two conormal lifts of the contact structure. We also present a combinatorial formula for the filtered DGA in terms of braid representatives of transverse links and apply it to show that the new invariant is independent of previously known invariants of transverse links.Comment: 23 pages, v2: minor corrections suggested by refere