English

The number of Reidemeister Moves Needed for Unknotting

Geometric Topology 2007-05-23 v1

Abstract

There is a positive constant c1c_1 such that for any diagram DD representing the unknot, there is a sequence of at most 2c1n2^{c_1 n} Reidemeister moves that will convert it to a trivial knot diagram, nn is the number of crossings in DD. A similar result holds for elementary moves on a polygonal knot KK embedded in the 1-skeleton of the interior of a compact, orientable, triangulated PLPL 3-manifold MM. There is a positive constant c2c_2 such that for each t1t \geq 1, if MM consists of tt tetrahedra, and KK is unknotted, then there is a sequence of at most 2c2t2^{c_2 t} elementary moves in MM which transforms KK to a triangle contained inside one tetrahedron of MM. We obtain explicit values for c1c_1 and c2c_2.

Keywords

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