Knots, minimal surfaces and J-holomorphic curves

TL;DR

This paper introduces a new knot invariant based on counting minimal discs in hyperbolic 4-space with boundary on the knot, extending Gromov--Witten theory to a setting with boundary degeneracies.

Contribution

It establishes that the count of minimal discs with a given boundary knot is a finite, isotopy-invariant, and introduces a family of invariants related to the extrinsic topology of the discs.

Findings

Number of minimal discs is a knot invariant.

Invariants are indexed by an integer related to the disc's topology.

The approach adapts Gromov--Witten theory to singular boundary conditions.

Abstract

Let $K$ be a knot in the 3-sphere, viewed as the ideal boundary of hyperbolic 4-space $\mathbb{H}^4$. We prove that the number of minimal discs in $\mathbb{H}^4$ with ideal boundary $K$ is a knot invariant. I.e.\ the number is finite and doesn't change under isotopies of $K$. In fact this gives a family of knot invariants, indexed by an integer describing the extrinsic topology of how the disc sits in $\mathbb{H}^4$. These invariants can be seen as Gromov--Witten invariants counting $J$-holomorphic discs in the twistor space $Z$ of $\mathbb{H}^4$. Whilst Gromov--Witten theory suggests the general scheme for defining the invariants, there are substantial differences in how this must be carried out in our situation. These are due to the fact that the geometry of both $\mathbb{H}^4$ and $Z$ becomes singular at infinity, and so the $J$-holomorphic curve equation is degenerate, rather than elliptic, at the boundary. This means that both the Fredholm and compactness arguments involve completely new features.