English

Every graph has an embedding in $S^3$ containing no non-hyperbolic knot

Geometric Topology 2009-06-15 v1

Abstract

In contrast with knots, whose properties depend only on their extrinsic topology in S3S^3, there is a rich interplay between the intrinsic structure of a graph and the extrinsic topology of all embeddings of the graph in S3S^3 . For example, it was shown in [2] that every embedding of the complete graph K7K_7 in S3S^3 contains a non-trivial knot. Later in it was shown that for every mNm \in N, there is a complete graph KnK_n such that every embedding of KnK_n in S3S_3 contains a knot QQ whose minimal crossing number is at least mm. Thus there are arbitrarily complicated knots in every embedding of a sufficiently large complete graph in S3S^3. We prove here the contrasting result that every graph has an embedding in S3S^3 such that every non-trivial knot in that embedding is hyperbolic. Our theorem implies that every graph has an embedding in S3S^3 which contains no composite or satellite knots.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.0906.2229,
  title  = {Every graph has an embedding in $S^3$ containing no non-hyperbolic knot},
  author = {Erica Flapan and Hugh Howards},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:0906.2229},
  year   = {2009}
}

Comments

12 pages 4 figures

R2 v1 2026-06-21T13:12:36.574Z