The Thurston polytope for four-stranded pretzel links
arXiv:math/0609466 · doi:10.2140/agt.2008.8.211
Abstract
In this paper we use Heegaard Floer link homology to determine the dual Thurston polytope for pretzel links of the form P(-2r_1-1, 2q_1, -2q_2, 2r_2+1) where r_i and q_i are positive integers. We apply this result to determine the Thurston norms of spanning surfaces for the individual link components, and we explicitly construct norm-realizing examples of such surfaces.