A diagrammatic approach to the Rasmussen invariant via tangles and cobordisms

Rasmussen’s s-invariant is an integer-valued knot invariant derived from Khovanov homology, and it has remarkable applications in topology, such as providing a combinatorial reproof of the Milnor conjecture. Although the s-invariant is defined using the quantum filtration of the homology group, it is difficult to interpret it geometrically. In this talk, we give a cobordism-based interpretation of the s-invariant based on Bar-Natan’s reformulation of Khovanov homology via tangles and cobordisms. This interpretation allows for the computation of the s-invariant from a tangle decomposition of the knot. As an application, we demonstrate that the s-invariants of 3-strand pretzel knots can be computed by hand.