Khovanov homology and equivariant surfaces

Abstract

We introduce a refinement of Bar-Natan homology for involutive links, extending the work of Lobb-Watson and Sano. We construct a new suite of numerical invariants and derive bounds for the genus of equivariant cobordisms between strongly invertible knots. Our invariants show that the difference between the equivariant slice genus and isotopy-equivariant slice genus can be arbitrarily large, whereas previously these were not known to differ.

arXiv comment97 pages, 4 tables, 60 figures (!)