Alternating surgeries

This thesis is concerned with the question of when the double branched cover of an alternating knot can arise by Dehn surgery on a knot in S^3. We approach this problem using a surgery obstruction, first developed by Greene, which combines Donaldson's Diagonalization Theorem with the $d$-invariants of Ozsvath and Szabo's Heegaard Floer homology. This obstruction shows that if the double branched cover of an alternating knot or link L arises by surgery on S^3, then for any alternating diagram the lattice associated to the Goeritz matrix takes the form of a changemaker lattice. By analyzing the structure of changemaker lattices, we show that the double branched cover of L arises by non-integer surgery on S^3 if and only if L has an alternating diagram which can be obtained by rational tangle replacement on an almost-alternating diagram of the unknot. When one considers half-integer surgery the resulting tangle replacement is simply a crossing change. This allows us to show that an alternating knot has unknotting number one if and only if it has an unknotting crossing in every alternating diagram. These techniques also produce several other interesting results: they have applications to characterizing slopes of torus knots; they produce a new proof for a theorem of Tsukamoto on the structure of almost-alternating diagrams of the unknot; and they provide several bounds on surgeries producing the double branched covers of alternating knots which are direct generalizations of results previously known for lens space surgeries. Here, a rational number p/q is said to be characterizing slope for K in S^3 if the oriented homeomorphism type of the manifold obtained by p/q-surgery on K determines K uniquely. The thesis begins with an exposition of the changemaker surgery obstruction, giving an amalgamation of results due to Gibbons, Greene and the author. It then gives background material on alternating knots and changemaker lattices. The latter part of the thesis is then taken up with the applications of this theory.

Connected Hopf algebras of finite Gelfand-Kirillov dimension

Following the seminal work of Zhuang, connected Hopf algebras of finite GK-dimension over algebraically closed fields of characteristic zero have been the subject of several recent papers. This thesis is concerned with continuing this line of research and promoting connected Hopf algebras as a natural, intricate and interesting class of algebras. We begin by discussing the theory of connected Hopf algebras which are either commutative or cocommutative, and then proceed to review the modern theory of arbitrary connected Hopf algebras of finite GK-dimension initiated by Zhuang. We next focus on the (left) coideal subalgebras of connected Hopf algebras of finite GK-dimension. They are shown to be deformations of commutative polynomial algebras. A number of homological properties follow immediately from this fact. Further properties are described, examples are considered and invariants are constructed. A connected Hopf algebra is said to be "primitively thick" if the difference between its GK-dimension and the vector-space dimension of its primitive space is precisely one . Building on the results of Wang, Zhang and Zhuang,, we describe a method of constructing such a Hopf algebra, and as a result obtain a host of new examples of such objects. Moreover, we prove that such a Hopf algebra can never be isomorphic to the enveloping algebra of a semisimple Lie algebra, nor can a semisimple Lie algebra appear as its primitive space. It has been asked in the literature whether connected Hopf algebras of finite GK-dimension are always isomorphic as algebras to enveloping algebras of Lie algebras. We provide a negative answer to this question by constructing a counterexample of GK-dimension 5. Substantial progress was made in determining the order of the antipode of a finite dimensional pointed Hopf algebra by Taft and Wilson in the 1970s. Our final main result is to show that the proof of their result can be generalised to give an analogous result for arbitrary pointed Hopf algebras.