English

On the complexity of torus knot recognition

Geometric Topology 2019-03-08 v2

Abstract

We show that the problem of recognizing that a knot diagram represents a specific torus knot, or any torus knot at all, is in the complexity class NPco-NP{\sf NP} \cap {\sf co\text{-}NP}, assuming the generalized Riemann hypothesis. We also show that satellite knot detection is in NP{\sf NP} under the same assumption, and that cabled knot detection and composite knot detection are unconditionally in NP{\sf NP}. Our algorithms are based on recent work of Kuperberg and of Lackenby on detecting knottedness.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1706.04424,
  title  = {On the complexity of torus knot recognition},
  author = {John A. Baldwin and Steven Sivek},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1706.04424},
  year   = {2019}
}

Comments

23 pages; v2: reorganized section 2, other minor changes

R2 v1 2026-06-22T20:18:30.512Z