Rational Whitney tower filtration of links

Abstract

We present complete classifications of links in the 3-sphere modulo framed and twisted Whitney towers in a rational homology 4-ball. This provides a geometric characterization of the vanishing of the Milnor invariants of links in terms of Whitney towers. Our result also says that the higher order Arf invariants, which are conjectured to be nontrivial, measure the potential difference between the Whitney tower theory in rational homology 4-balls and that in the 4-ball extensively developed by Conant, Schneiderman and Teichner.