Hedden's conjecture on homomorphisms induced by satellite patterns

A pattern PS1×D2P\subset S^1\times D^2 induces a map [P] ⁣:CC[P]\colon\mathcal{C}\to\mathcal{C} on the knot concordance group, given by [K][P(K)][K]\mapsto[P(K)]. This map is a homomorphism when P(K#K)P(K\mathbin{\#}K') is concordant to P(K)#P(K)P(K)\mathbin{\#}P(K') for all knots K,KK,K'. Hedden's conjecture. If [P][P] is a homomorphism, then it is one of the maps

[K][U],[K][K],[K][Kr].[K]\mapsto[U],\qquad [K]\mapsto[K],\qquad [K]\mapsto[K^r].

These are the three evident homomorphisms induced by satelliting; the conjecture asserts that no other satellite pattern induces a homomorphism of the concordance group.

Sources & referencesView supporting material

Primary source

Alex Eldridge, “The Ozsváth-Szabó tau-invariant of braided satellites”, arXiv:2606.10351 (2026).

Additional references

5 papers in this index state this conjecture (2019–2026). The statement above is taken from the most recent of them; the others are arXiv:2402.04629, arXiv:2308.06890, arXiv:2207.14198, arXiv:1912.07914.

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