Deeply Slice Knot Detection via Immersed Curves

Abstract: On the Kirby list, Akbulut poses the question of whether there exists a homology 3-sphere $Y$, other than $S^3$, with the following property: Any knot $K$, representing $0\inπ_{1}(Y),$ which is slice in some contractible 4-manifold $X$ which $Y$ bounds, is already slice in $Y\times[0,1]$. In this paper, we make progress on this question by producing a class of deeply slice knots. We construct these knots by first specifying a pair $(X, K)$, where $X$ is a contractible 4-manifold with integral homology 3-sphere boundary and $K$ is slice in $X$. Then, we show the knot is deeply slice using concordance invariants from Heegaard Floer homology. We employ immersed curve techniques to compute these invariants.