Related papers: Segment number of knots
Final revision. To appear in the Journal of Differential Geometry. This paper studies knots that are transversal to the standard contact structure in $\reals^3$, bringing techniques from topological knot theory to bear on their transversal…
A knot is an a-small knot if its exterior does not contain closed incompressible surfaces disjoint from some incompressible Seifert surface for the knot. Using circular thin position for knots we prove that the handle number is additive…
A knot is called minimal if its knot group admits epimorphisms onto the knot groups of only the trivial knot and itself. In this paper, we determine which two-bridge knot $\mathfrak{b}(p,q)$ is minimal where $q \leq 6$ or $p \leq 100$.
A knot invariant is called skein if it is determined by a finite number of skein relations. In the paper we discuss some basic properties of skein invariants and mention some known examples of skein invariants.
Introduced recently, an n-crossing is a singular point in a projection of a link at which n strands cross such that each strand travels straight through the crossing. We introduce the notion of an \"ubercrossing projection, a knot…
An obstacle representation of a graph $G$ is a set of points in the plane representing the vertices of $G$, together with a set of polygonal obstacles such that two vertices of $G$ are connected by an edge in $G$ if and only if the line…
We classify graphs that are 0, 1, or 2 edges short of being complete partite graphs with respect to intrinsic linking and intrinsic knotting. In addition, we classify intrinsic knotting of graphs on 8 vertices. For graphs in these families,…
We define the {\it Wirtinger number} of a link, an invariant closely related to the meridional rank. The Wirtinger number is the minimum number of generators of the fundamental group of the link complement over all meridional presentations…
We prove that every connected graph with $s$ vertices of degree~1 and 3 and $t$ vertices of degree at least~4 has a spanning tree with at least ${1\over 3}t +{1\over 4}s+{3\over 2}$ leaves. We present infinite series of graphs showing that…
We show that if a classical knot diagram satisfies a certain combinatorial condition then it is minimal with respect to the number of classical crossings. This statement is proved by using the Kauffman bracket and the construction of atoms…
Let $G$ be a simple undirected graph. The regular number of $G$ is defined to be the minimum number of subsets into which the edge set of $G$ can be partitioned so that the subgraph induced by each subset is regular. In this work, we obtain…
Given a diagram D of a knot K, we give easily computable bounds for Rasmussen's concordance invariant s(K). The bounds are not independent of the diagram D chosen, but we show that for diagrams satisfying a given condition the bounds are…
A contraction sequence of a graph consists of iteratively merging two of its vertices until only one vertex remains. The recently introduced twin-width graph invariant is based on contraction sequences. More precisely, if one puts red edges…
In this paper we give an overview of the graph invariants queue number and stack number (the latter also called the page number or book thickness). Due to their similarity, it has been studied for a long time, whether one of them is bounded…
In [3] we constructed the parity-biquandle bracket valued in {\em pictures} (linear combinations of $4$-valent graphs). We gave no example of classical links such that the parity-biquandle bracket of which is not trivial. In the present…
A string graph is the intersection graph of curves in the plane. Kratochv\'il previously showed the existence of infinitely many obstacles: graphs that are not string graphs but for which any edge contraction or vertex deletion produces a…
We study the band-unknotting number $u_{nb}(K)$ of a knot $K$, and how it behaves with respect to connect sums. We show that this sub-additive function is not additive under connected sums, by finding infinitely many examples of knots $K_1,…
We prove that if an alternating knot has unknotting number one, then there exists an unknotting crossing in any alternating diagram. This is done by showing that the obstruction to unknotting number one developed by Greene in his work on…
The A-polynomial of a knot in S^3 defines a complex plane curve associated to the set of representations of the fundamental group of the knot exterior into SL(2,C). Here, we show that a non-trivial knot in S^3 has a non-trivial…
Consider a setting where possibly sensitive information sent over a path in a network is visible to every {neighbor} of the path, i.e., every neighbor of some node on the path, thus including the nodes on the path itself. The exposure of a…