On the Cosmetic Crossing Conjecture for Special Alternating Links

Abstract

We prove that a family of links, which includes all special alternating knots, does not admit non-nugatory crossing changes which preserve the isotopy type of the link. Our proof incorporates a result of Lidman and Moore on crossing changes to knots with $L$-space branched double-covers, as well as tools from Scharlemann and Thompon's proof of the cosmetic crossing conjecture for the unknot.