On braided, banded surfaces and ribbon obstructions

Abstract

We discuss how to apply work of L. Rudolph to braid conjugacy class invariants to obtain potentially effective obstructions to a slice knot being ribbon. We then apply these ideas to a family of braid conjugacy class invariants coming from Khovanov-Lee theory and explain why we do not obtain effective ribbon obstructions in this case.

7 pages, 2 figures, based on lecture given at Georgia Topology Conference 2017