Reidemeister and movie moves for involutive links

Abstract

An involutive link is a link which is invariant under the standard rotation by 180 degrees in $S^3$. We establish an equivariant analogue of the work of Carter and Saito aimed at studying equivariant cobordisms between involutive links. This gives a set of $39$ equivariant movie moves that suffice to go between any two movie presentations of a pair of equivariantly isotopic cobordisms. Along the way, we give a singularity-theoretic proof of the equivariant Reidemeister theorem and study loops of equivariant Reidemeister moves. Our approach proceeds by analyzing codimension $2$ singularities of equivariant maps from $S^1$ to ${\mathbb{R}}^2$, as well as utilizing embedded equivariant Morse theory.

114 pages, 71 figures. v2: added Section 8.5 regarding cobordisms with isolated fixed points of the Z_2 action