The cobordism distance between a knot and its reverse

Charles Livingston

Published 2020-11-24Version 1

The cobordism distance between knots, d(K,J), equals the four-genus g_4(K # -J). We consider d(K,K^r), where K^r is the reverse of K. It is elementary that 0 \le d(K,K^r) \le 2g_4(K) and it is known that there are knots K for which d(K,K^r) is arbitrarily large. Here it is shown that for any knot for which g_4(K) = g_3(K) (such as non-slice knots with g_3(K) = 1 or strongly quasi-positive knots), one has that d(K,K^r) is strictly less that twice g_4(K). It is shown that for arbitrary positive g, there exist knots for which d(K,K^r) = g = g_4(K). There are no known examples for which d(K,K^r) > g_4(K).