The Concordance Genus of Knots

In knot concordance three genera arise naturally, g(K), g4(K), and gc(K): these are the classical genus, the 4–ball genus, and the concordance genus, defined to be the minimum genus among all knots concordant to K. Clearly 0 ≤ g4(K) ≤ gc(K) ≤ g(K). Casson and Nakanishi gave examples to show that g4(K) need not equal gc(K). We begin by reviewing and extending their results. For knots representing elements inA, the concordance group of algebraically slice knots, the relationships between these genera are less clear. Casson and Gordon’s result that A is nontrivial implies that g4(K) can be nonzero for knots in A. Gilmer proved that g4(K) can be arbitrarily large for knots in A. We will prove that there are knots K in A with g4(K) = 1 and gc(K) arbitrarily large. Finally, we tabulate gc for all knots with 10 or fewer crossings. This requires the development of further obstructions and the description of previously unnoticed concordances.