High-Dimensional Knot Theory
Subtitle: Algebraic Surgery in Codimension 2
Publisher: Springer Berlin / Heidelberg
Published: 2010
Language: eng
Number of pages: 646
ISBN-13: 9783642083297
Subjects: Knot theory; Surgery (topology)
Description: High-dimensional knot theory is the study of the embeddings of n-dimensional manifolds in (n+2)-dimensional manifolds, generalizing the traditional study of knots in the case n=1. This is the first book entirely devoted to high-dimensional knots. The main theme is the application of the author's algebraic theory of surgery to provide a unified treatment of the invariants of codimension 2 embeddings, generalizing the Alexander polynomials and Seifert forms of classical knot theory. Many results in the research literature are thus brought into a single framework, and new results are obtained. The treatment is particularly effective in dealing with open books, which are manifolds with codimension 2 submanifolds such that the complement fibres over a circle. The book concludes with an appendix by E. Winkelnkemper on the history of open books.