State Cycles, Quasipositive Modification, and Constructing H-thick Knots in Khovanov Homology

Abstract

We study Khovanov homology classes which have state cycle representatives, and examine how they interact with Jacobsson homomorphisms and Lee's map $\Phi$. As an application, we describe a general procedure, quasipositive modification, for constructing H-thick knots in rational Khovanov homology. Moreover, we show that specific families of such knots cannot be detected by Khovanov's thickness criteria. We also exhibit a sequence of prime links related by quasipositive modification whose width is increasing.