Cable Links, Annuli and Sutured Floer homology

Abstract

We apply sutured Floer homology techniques to study the knot and link Floer homologies of various links with annuli embedded in their exteriors. Our main results include, for large $m$, characterizations of links with the same link Floer homology as $(n,nm)$-cables of $L$-space knots or the same knot Floer homology as $(2,2m)$-cables of $L$-space knots. Note that Knot Floer homology carries less grading data than Link Floer homology, so the latter characterizations are stronger than former. These characterizations yield some new link detection results.