English

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 Δ(t)\Delta(t) 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