Branched covers bounding rational homology balls
arXiv:2002.10324 · doi:10.2140/agt.2021.21.3569
Abstract
Prime power fold cyclic branched covers along smoothly slice knots all bound rational homology balls. This phenomenon, however, does not characterize slice knots. In this paper, we give a new construction of non-slice knots that have the above property. The sliceness obstruction comes from computing twisted Alexander polynomials, and we introduce new techniques to simplify their calculation.
19 pages, 5 figures, Version 2: Minor changes to abstract and introduction. Added references on knots that are not concordant to their reverses