Polynomial splittings of metabelian von Neumann rho-invariants

Abstract

We show that if the connected sum of two knots with coprime Alexander polynomials has vanishing von Neumann rho-invariants associated with certain metabelian representations then so do both knots. As an application, we give a new example of an infinite family of knots which are linearly independent in the knot concordance group.

8 pages, 1 figure