Abstract
We use Lee’s work on the Khovanov homology to define a knot invariant s. We show that s(K) is a concordance invariant and that it provides a lower bound for the smooth slice genus of K. As a corollary, we give a purely combinatorial proof of the Milnor conjecture.
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The author was partially supported by an NSF Postdoctoral fellowship.
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Rasmussen, J. Khovanov homology and the slice genus. Invent. math. 182, 419–447 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00222-010-0275-6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00222-010-0275-6