Nonexistence of Whitney towers with the framed Arf tree invariant

Let A:S2S2B4A:S^2\cup S^2\looparrowright B^4 support a Whitney tower W\mathcal W, and let t(W)t(\mathcal W) denote its associated tree invariant. Let TT be the sum of trees in Figure 8 of the source, possibly together with higher-order trees. Framed Arf tree restriction. There does not exist such an AA supporting W\mathcal W with

t(W)=T.t(\mathcal W)=T.

This is another formulation of the conjecture that the Bing double of any knot with non-trivial classical Arf invariant does not bound an order-six framed Whitney tower. The claim remains open.

Sources & referencesView supporting material

Primary source

Rob Schneiderman, “Introduction to Whitney Towers”, arXiv:2012.01475 (2020).

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