English

Petal grid diagrams of torus knots

Geometric Topology 2024-10-22 v1

Abstract

A petal diagram of a knot is a projection with a single multi-crossing such that there are no nested loops. The petal number p(K)p(K) of a knot KK is the minimum number of loops among all petal diagrams of KK. Let Tn,sT_{n,s} denote the (n,s)(n,s)-torus knot for relatively prime integers 2n<s2\le n<s. Recently, Kim, No and Yoo proved that p(Tn,s)2s2sn+1p(T_{n,s})\le 2s-2\left\lfloor \frac sn\right\rfloor+1 whenever s±1modns\equiv \pm 1\bmod n. They conjectured that the inequality holds without the assumption s±1modns\equiv \pm 1\bmod n. They also showed that p(Tn,s)=2s1p(T_{n,s})=2s-1 whenever 2n<s<2n2\le n<s<2n and n1modsnn\equiv 1\bmod s-n. Their proofs construct petal grid diagrams for those torus knots. In this paper, we prove the conjecture that p(Tn,s)2s2sn+1p(T_{n,s})\le 2s-2\left\lfloor \frac sn\right\rfloor+1 holds for any 2n<s2\le n<s. We also show that p(Tn,s)=2s1p(T_{n,s})=2s-1 holds for any 2n<s<2n2\le n<s<2n. Our proofs construct petal grid diagrams for any torus knots.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2310.19486,
  title  = {Petal grid diagrams of torus knots},
  author = {Eon-Kyung Lee and Sang-Jin Lee},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2310.19486},
  year   = {2024}
}