Smooth and Topological Almost Concordance

Abstract

We investigate the disparity between smooth and topological almost concordance of knots in general 3-manifolds Y. Almost concordance is defined by considering knots in Y modulo concordance in Y x [0, 1] and the action of the concordance group of knots in S-3 that ties in local knots. We prove that the trivial free homotopy class in every 3-manifold other than the 3-sphere contains an infinite family of knots, all topologically concordant, but not smoothly almost concordant to one another. Then, in every lens space and for every free homotopy class, we find a pair of topologically concordant but not smoothly almost concordant knots. Finally, as a topological counterpoint to these results, we show that in every lens space every free homotopy class contains infinitely many topological almost concordance classes.