English

Gaps between consecutive untwisting numbers

Geometric Topology 2020-12-16 v1

Abstract

For p1p\geq 1 one can define a generalization of the unknotting number tuptu_p called the ppth untwisting number which counts the number of null-homologous twists on at most 2p2p strands required to convert the knot to the unknot. We show that for any p2p\geq 2 the difference between the consecutive untwisting numbers tup1tu_{p-1} and tuptu_p can be arbitrarily large. We also show that torus knots exhibit arbitrarily large gaps between tu1tu_1 and tu2tu_2.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1908.06447,
  title  = {Gaps between consecutive untwisting numbers},
  author = {Duncan McCoy},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1908.06447},
  year   = {2020}
}

Comments

6 pages, 4 figures

R2 v1 2026-06-23T10:50:09.879Z