Knot Floer homology and the four-ball genus

We use the knot filtration on the Heegaard Floer complex CF to define an integer invariant tau ( K) for knots. Like the classical signature, this invariant gives a homomorphism from the knot concordance group to Z. As such, it gives lower bounds for the slice genus ( and hence also the unknotting number) of a knot; but unlike the signature, tau gives sharp bounds on the four- ball genera of torus knots. As another illustration, we calculate the invariant for several ten- crossing knots.