Related papers: Milnor Invariants for Spatial Graphs
We develop a general diagrammatic theory of welded graphs, and provide an extension of Satoh's Tube map from welded graphs to ribbon surface-links. As a topological application, we obtain a complete link-homotopy classification of so-called…
Knots and links in 3-manifolds are studied by applying intersection invariants to singular concordances. The resulting link invariants generalize the Arf invariant, the mod 2 Sato-Levine invariants, and Milnor's triple linking numbers.…
We use Polyak's skein relation to give a new proof that Milnor's string link homotopy invariants are finite type invariants, and to develop a recursive relation for their associated weight systems. We show that the obstruction to the…
Locally stable maps $S^3\to\mathbb{R}^4$ are classified up to homotopy through locally stable maps. The equivalence class of a map $f$ is determined by three invariants: the isotopy class $\sigma(f)$ of its framed singularity link, the…
In 1993, Fenn, Rourke and Sanderson introduced rack spaces and rack homotopy invariants, and modifications to quandle spaces and quandle homotopy invariants were introduced by Nosaka in 2011. In this paper, we define the Cayley-type graph…
This paper studies rotational virtual knot theory and its relationship with quantum link invariants. Every quantum link invariant for classical knots and links extends to an invariant of rotational virtual knots and links. The paper sets up…
A handlebody-link is a disjoint union of embeddings of handlebodies in $S^3$ and an HL-homotopy is an equivalence relation on handlebody-links generated by self-crossing changes. The second author and Ryo Nikkuni classified the set of…
Cut-diagrams are diagrammatic objects, defined in dimensions 1 and 2, that generalize links in 3-space and surface-links in 4-space; in dimension 1, this coincides with the theory of welded links. Using cut-diagrams, we introduce an…
The paper concerns the tree invariants of string links, introduced by Kravchenko and Polyak and closely related to the classical Milnor linking numbers also known as $\bar{\mu}$--invariants. We prove that, analogously as for…
We show that the category of graphs has the structure of a 2-category with homotopy as the 2-cells. We then develop an explicit description of homotopies for finite graphs, in terms of what we call `spider moves'. We then create a category…
Homotopy links have proven to be one of the most powerful tools of stratified homotopy theory. In previous work, we described combinatorial models for the generalized homotopy links of a stratified simplicial set. For many purposes, in…
Given an $m$-component link $L$ in $S^3$ ($m \ge 2$), we construct a family of links which are link homotopic, but not link isotopic, to $L$. Every proper sublink of such a link is link isotopic to the corresponding sublink of $L$.…
For a classical link, Milnor defined a family of isotopy invariants, called Milnor $\overline{\mu}$-invariants. Recently, Chrisman extended Milnor $\overline{\mu}$-invariants to welded links by a topological approach. The aim of this paper…
We introduce new skein invariants of links based on a procedure where we first apply the skein relation only to crossings of distinct components, so as to produce collections of unlinked knots. We then evaluate the resulting knots using a…
The fundamental quandle is a powerful invariant of knots, links and spatial graphs, but it is often difficult to determine whether two quandles are isomorphic. One approach is to look at quotients of the quandle, such as the $n$-quandle…
To each three-component link in the 3-sphere, we associate a geometrically natural characteristic map from the 3-torus to the 2-sphere, and show that the pairwise linking numbers and Milnor triple linking number that classify the link up to…
We study tangle replacement in the context of spatial graphs. The main results show that, for certain spatial handcuff graphs, there is a one-to-one correspondence between the neighborhood equivalence classes of the spatial graphs obtained…
Geometric interpretations of some virtual knot invariants are given in terms of invariants of links in $\mathbb{S}^3$. Alexander polynomials of almost classical knots are shown to be specializations of the multi-variable Alexander…
Naturally occurring diagrams in algebraic topology are commutative up to homotopy, but not on the nose. It was quickly realized that very little can be done with this information. Homotopy coherent category theory arose out of a desire to…
We introduce a notion of intrinsic linking and knotting for virtual spatial graphs. Our theory gives two filtrations of the set of all graphs, allowing us to measure, in a sense, how intrinsically linked or knotted a graph is; we show that…