Analytic knots, satellites and the 4-ball genus

Abstract

Call a smooth knot (or smooth link) in the unit sphere in $\mathbb{C}^2$ analytic (respectively, smoothly analytic) if it bounds a complex curve (respectively, a smooth complex curve) in the complex ball. Let $K$ be a smoothly analytic knot. For a small tubular neighbourhood of $K$ we give a sharp lower bound for the 4-ball genus of analytic links $L$ contained in it.