The number of Reidemeister Moves Needed for Unknotting
Geometric Topology
2007-05-23 v1
Abstract
There is a positive constant such that for any diagram representing the unknot, there is a sequence of at most Reidemeister moves that will convert it to a trivial knot diagram, is the number of crossings in . A similar result holds for elementary moves on a polygonal knot embedded in the 1-skeleton of the interior of a compact, orientable, triangulated 3-manifold . There is a positive constant such that for each , if consists of tetrahedra, and is unknotted, then there is a sequence of at most elementary moves in which transforms to a triangle contained inside one tetrahedron of . We obtain explicit values for and .
Cite
@article{arxiv.math/9807012,
title = {The number of Reidemeister Moves Needed for Unknotting},
author = {Joel Hass and Jeffrey C. Lagarias},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:math/9807012},
year = {2007}
}
Comments
48 pages, 14 figures