Seifert genus Created 2026-09-24 Updated 2026-10-14
Seifert longitude Created 2026-09-24 Updated 2026-10-14
The Seifert longitude is the zero-linking parallel of a knot on the boundary of its tubular neighborhood. It is the framing induced by a Seifert surface.
Cut a knot exterior along a Seifert surface and stack copies to form its infinite cyclic cover. Linking-dual generators for the homology of the cut-open piece give the positive and negative inclusion matrices and in row convention. The gluing relations therefore have matrix . The H0 gluing map is multiplication by and is injective, so these relations present the entire Alexander module of a knot. Its order is the determinant, up to a Laurent unit.
Signature of a knot 2026-10-14
The knot signature is the signature of the symmetrized Seifert matrix. Equivalently it is the signature of the double branched covering of over a pushed-in Seifert surface. At it agrees with the Levine-Tristram signature. It is additive under connected sum of knots, changes sign under reflection, and obeys . State the ambient orientation and push-off convention when assigning a sign.