Knot Floer homology and rational surgeries

Abstract

Let $K$ be a rationally null-homologous knot in a three-manifold $Y$. We construct a version of knot Floer homology in this context, including a description of the Floer homology of a three-manifold obtained as Morse surgery on the knot $K$. As an application, we express the Heegaard Floer homology of rational surgeries on $Y$ along a null-homologous knot $K$ in terms of the filtered homotopy type of the knot invariant for $K$. This has applications to Dehn surgery problems for knots in $S^3$. In a different direction, we use the techniques developed here to calculate the Heegaard Floer homology of an arbitrary Seifert fibered three-manifold with even first Betti number.