English

The unknotting numbers for plus-welded knotoids

Geometric Topology 2026-01-28 v1

Abstract

Knotoid theory is a generalization of knot theory introduced by Turaev in 2012. In recent years, various invariants of knotoids have been studied. In this paper, we mainly discuss unknotting moves and unknotting numbers of plus-welded knotoids. Firstly, we prove that a descending diagram of a plus-welded knotoid can be transformed into a trivial one through a finite sequence of Ω1\Omega_1, VΩ1VΩ4V\Omega_1 - V\Omega_4, Ωv\Omega_v, Φover\Phi_{\text{over}}, and Φ+\Phi_+-moves. Secondly, we extend the warping degree of knots to plus-welded knotoids and discuss its properties. Finally, by utilizing the descending diagram and the warping degree, we obtain two unknotting operations for plus-welded knotoids, referred as a crossing change and a crossing virtualization. For both operations, we find upper bounds for corresponding unknotting numbers of plus-welded knotoids.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2601.19549,
  title  = {The unknotting numbers for plus-welded knotoids},
  author = {Fengling Li and Andrei Vesnin and Xuan Yang},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2601.19549},
  year   = {2026}
}

Comments

23 pages, 25 figures. Comments are welcome!

R2 v1 2026-07-01T09:22:12.387Z