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Geometry-Topology Seminar

Thursday, November 20, 2014 - 4:30pm

Luke Williams

Michigan State University

Location

University of Pennsylvania

DRL 4C8

It is known that for coprime integers p > q > 0, the lens space L(p^2,pq-1) bounds a rational ball arising as the 2-fold branched cover of a (smooth) slice disk in B^4 bounding the associated 2-bridge knot. I will show that two different handle decompositions of rational balls bounding L(p^2,pq-1) appearing in the literature coincide - answering a question of Kadokami and Yamada. One of these handle decompositions was previously known to admit a Stein structure filling the universally tight contact structure on L(p^2,pq-1). I will show that the same holds for the other handle decomposition as well. Then, Lisca's classification of the symplectic fillings of L(p^2,pq-1) equipped with the universally tight contact structure implies the two handle decompositions specify the same smooth 4-manifold. Along the way, I'll construct an explicit diffeomorphism between the two spaces through ``carving.''