Combinatorial Description of Knot Floer Homology of Cyclic Branched Covers

Abstract

We introduce a simple combinatorial method for computing all versions of the knot Floer homology of the preimage of a two-bridge knot K(p,q) inside its double-branched cover, -L(p,q). The 4-pointed genus 1 Heegaard diagram we obtain looks like a twisted version of the toroidal grid diagrams recently introduced by Manolescu, Ozsvath, and Sarkar. We conclude with a discussion of how one might obtain nice Heegaard diagrams for cyclic branched covers of more general knots.