Annulus open book decompositions and the self linking number
- Series
- Geometry Topology Seminar
- Time
- Monday, March 2, 2009 - 13:00 for 1 hour (actually 50 minutes)
- Location
- Skiles 269
- Speaker
- Keiko Kawamuro – IAS
We introduce a construction of an immersed surface for a null-homologous braid in an annulus open book decomposition. This is hinted by the so called Bennequin surface for a braid in R^3. By resolving the singularities of the immersed surface, we obtain an embedded Seifert surface for the braid. Then we compute a self-linking number formula using this embedded surface and observe that the Bennequin inequality is satisfied if and only the contact structure is tight. We also prove that our self-linking formula is invariant (changes by 2) under a positive (negative) braid stabilization which preserves (changes) the transverse knot class.