Floer homology, twist coefficients, and capping off

Abstract

For an open book decomposition (S, φ), the fractional Dehn twist coefficients are rational numbers measuring the amount that the monodromy φ twists the surface S near each boundary component. In general, the twist coefficients do not behave nicely under the operation of capping off a boundary component. The goal of this paper is to use Heegaard Floer homology to constrain the behavior of the fractional Dehn twist coefficients after capping off. We also use our results about fractional Dehn twists to study the Floer homology of cyclic branched covers over fibered two-component links.