Embedded contact knot homology and a surgery formula

TL;DR

This paper extends embedded contact knot homology (ECK) to rational open books, establishes a large n-surgery formula, and provides evidence for its conjectured equivalence with knot Floer homology, enriching the understanding of contact topology.

Contribution

It generalizes ECK to rational open books, formulates a large n-surgery formula, and compares ECK with knot Floer homology, advancing the field of contact topology.

Findings

ECK is extended to rationally null-homologous knots.

A large n-surgery formula for ECK is established.

ECK is shown to be independent of certain auxiliary choices.

Abstract

Embedded contact knot homology (ECK) is a variation on Embedded contact homology (ECH), defined with respect to an open book decomposition compatible with a contact structure on some 3-manifold, M. The knot in question is given by the (null-homologous) binding of the open book and the chain complex is defined in terms of closed orbits of the Reeb vector field and certain pseudoholomorphic curves in the symplectization of the knot complement. In this thesis we first generalize this construction to the case of rational open book decompositions, allowing us to define ECK for rationally null-homologous knots. In its most general form this is a bi-filtered chain complex whose homology yields ECH of the closed manifold. There is also a hat version of ECK in this situation which is equipped with an Alexander grading equivalent to that in the Heegaard Floer setting, categorifies the Alexander polynomial, and is conjecturally isomorphic to the hat version of knot Floer homology, HFK. The main result of this thesis is a large negative n-surgery formula for ECK. Namely, we start with an (integral) open book decomposition of a manifold with binding K and compute, for large n, ECK of the knot K(-n) obtained by performing (-n)-surgery on K. This formula agrees with Hedden's large n-surgery formula for HFK, providing supporting evidence towards the conjectured equivalence between the two theories. Along the way, we also prove that ECK is, in many cases, independent of the choices made to define it, namely the almost complex structure on the symplectization and the homotopy type of the contact form. We also prove that, in the case of integral open book decompositions, the hat version of ECK is supported in Alexander gradings less than or equal to twice the genus of the knot.

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