Uniqueness of standard neighborhoods with negative boundary slope

Let TT be a transverse knot in a contact manifold. A standard neighborhood of TT has a boundary slope, measured with respect to the chosen framing, and standard neighborhoods are considered up to contact isotopy. Negative-slope neighborhood conjecture. Any standard neighborhood of TT with boundary slope less than zero is unique up to contact isotopy. This conjecture is motivated by the known examples of transverse knots with non-unique standard neighborhoods, whose non-uniqueness occurs at nonnegative slopes; the general uniqueness assertion remains open.

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Primary source

John B. Etnyre, “Neighborhoods of transverse knots and destabilizations”, arXiv:2512.15651 (2026).

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