Flattening knotted surfaces

TL;DR

This paper introduces a new method called flattening for analyzing knotted surfaces in four-dimensional space, leading to the definition of three invariants that help understand their structure.

Contribution

It presents a novel approach to project knotted surfaces onto a 2-sphere using hyperbolic diagrams, defining new invariants and applying them to satellite 2-knots.

Findings

Defined three invariants: layering, trunk, and partition number.

Established properties of flattenings and their invariants.

Applied flattenings to study satellite 2-knots.

Abstract

A knotted surface in the 4-sphere may be described by means of a hyperbolic diagram that captures the 0-section of a special Morse function, called a hyperbolic decomposition. We show that every hyperbolic decomposition of a knotted surface K defines a projection of K onto a 2-sphere, whose set of critical values is the hyperbolic diagram of K. We apply such projections, called flattenings, to define three invariants of knotted surfaces: the layering, the trunk and the partition number. The basic properties of flattenings and their derived invariants are obtained. Our construction is used to study flattenings of satellite 2-knots.