On closed oriented surfaces in the 3-sphere

TL;DR

This paper introduces a complete invariant called the fundamental span for classifying embeddings of closed surfaces in the 3-sphere, enabling distinction of complex surface knots and chirality beyond traditional polynomial invariants.

Contribution

It defines the fundamental span as a new invariant for surface embeddings in S^3 and demonstrates its effectiveness in distinguishing inequivalent knots and surfaces, including bi-knotted surfaces and handlebody knots.

Findings

Successfully distinguishes handlebody knots 5_1 and 6_4

Constructs infinite pairs of inequivalent bi-knotted surfaces with homeomorphic complements

Shows certain knots are chiral using the fundamental span, undetectable by Jones and HOMFLY-PT polynomials

Abstract

In this paper we study embeddings of oriented connected closed surfaces in $\mathbb S^3$. We define a complete invariant, the fundamental span, for such embeddings, generalizing the notion of the peripheral system of a knot group. From the fundamental span, several computable invariants are derived and employed to study handlebody knots, bi-knotted surfaces, and chirality of knots. These invariants are capable to distinguish inequivalent handlebody knots and bi-knotted surfaces with homeomorphic complements. Particularly, we obtain an alternative proof of the inequivalence of Ishii et al.'s handlebody knots $5_{1}$ and $6_{4}$, and also construct an infinite family of pairs of inequivalent bi-knotted surfaces with homeomorphic complements. An interpretation of Fox's invariant in terms of the fundamental span is discussed and used to show $9_{42}$ and $10_{71}$ in the Rolfsen knot table are chiral; their chirality is known to be undetectable by the Jones and HOMFLY-PT polynomials.