English

Complexity of Unknotting of Trivial 2-knots

Metric Geometry 2019-12-17 v3 Geometric Topology

Abstract

We construct families of trivial 22-knots KiK_i in R4\mathbb{R}^4 such that the maximal complexity of 22-knots in any isotopy connecting KiK_i with the standard unknot grows faster than a tower of exponentials of any fixed height of the complexity of KiK_i. Here we can either construct KiK_i as smooth embeddings and measure their complexity as the ropelength (a.k.a the crumpledness) or construct PL-knots KiK_i, consider isotopies through PL knots, and measure the complexity of a PL-knot as the minimal number of flat 22-simplices in its triangulation. These results contrast with the situation of classical knots in R3\mathbb{R}^3, where every unknot can be untied through knots of complexity that is only polynomially higher than the complexity of the initial knot.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1510.02773,
  title  = {Complexity of Unknotting of Trivial 2-knots},
  author = {Boris Lishak and Alexander Nabutovsky},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1510.02773},
  year   = {2019}
}