Christoffel words and the strong Fox conjecture for two-bridge knots
Geometric Topology
2022-12-12 v1 Combinatorics
Abstract
The trapezoidal Fox conjecture states that the coefficient sequence of the Alexander polynomial of an alternating knot is unimodal. We are motivated by a harder question, the strong Fox conjecture, which asks whether the coefficient sequence of the Alexander polynomial of alternating knots is actually log-concave. Our approach is to introduce a polynomial associated to a Christoffel word and to prove that its coefficient sequence is log-concave. This implies the strong Fox conjecture for two-bridge knots.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.2212.04561,
title = {Christoffel words and the strong Fox conjecture for two-bridge knots},
author = {Ian M. Banfield},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2212.04561},
year = {2022}
}
Comments
19 pages; 9 figures