Lecture notes on link homologies and knotted surfaces

Abstract

Link homology theories (such as knot Floer homology and Khovanov homology) have become indispensable tools for studying knots and links, including powerful 4-dimensional obstructions. These notes, based on lectures given at the 2024 Georgia Topology Summer School, discuss what these toolkits say about surfaces in 4-space themselves, via the homomorphisms assigned to link cobordisms. We begin with a brief overview of these theories (focusing on their shared formal properties) and survey some of their applications to knotted surfaces. Afterwards, we give an introduction to Khovanov homology (with an eye towards its cobordism maps), discuss hands-on computational techniques for Khovanov and Bar-Natan homology, and outline the role of the Bar-Natan category in this story.