Characterization of the reduced peripheral system of links

Abstract

The reduced peripheral system was introduced by Milnor in the fifties for the study of links up to link-homotopy, i.e. up to isotopies and crossing changes within each link component. However, for four or more components, this invariant does not yield a complete link-homotopy invariant. This paper provides two characterizations of links having the same reduced peripheral system: a diagrammatical one, in terms of link diagrams, seen as welded diagrams up to self-virtualization, and a topological one, in terms of ribbon solid tori in 4--space up to ribbon link-homotopy.