English

The crossing number of composite knots

Geometric Topology 2014-02-26 v2

Abstract

It is a very old conjecture that the crossing number of knots is additive under connected sum. In other words, if K#K' is the connected sum of knots K and K', then does the equality c(K#K') = c(K) + c(K') hold? We prove that c(K#K') is at most c(K) + c(K') and at least (c(K) + c(K'))/152.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.0805.4706,
  title  = {The crossing number of composite knots},
  author = {Marc Lackenby},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:0805.4706},
  year   = {2014}
}

Comments

28 pages, 20 figures; final version, to appear in the Journal of Topology