Unraveling the Integral Knot Concordance Group

The group of concordance classes of high dimensional homotopy spheres knotted in codimension two in the standard sphere has an intricate algebraic structure which this paper unravels. The first level of invariants is given by the classical Alexander polynomial. By means of a transfer construction, the integral Seifert matrices of knots whose Alexander polynomial is a power of a fixed irreducible polynomial are related to forms with the appropriate Hermitian symmetry on torsion free modules over an order in the algebraic number field determined by the Alexander polynomial. This group is then explicitly computed in terms of standard arithmetic invariants. In the symmetric case, this computation shows there are no elements of order four with an irreducible Alexander polynomial. Furthermore, the order is not necessarily Dedekind and non-projective modules can occur. The second level of invariants is given by constructing an exact sequence relating the global concordance group to the individual pieces described above. The integral concordance group is then computed by a localization exact sequence relating it to the rational group computed by J. Levine and a group of torsion linking forms.