Harman Patil (Editor)

Milnor conjecture (topology)

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In knot theory, the Milnor conjecture says that the slice genus of the ( p , q ) torus knot is

( p 1 ) ( q 1 ) / 2.

It is in a similar vein to the Thom conjecture.

It was first proved by gauge theoretic methods by Peter Kronheimer and Tomasz Mrowka. Jacob Rasmussen later gave a purely combinatorial proof using Khovanov homology, by means of the s-invariant.

References

Milnor conjecture (topology) Wikipedia