Related papers: Positive knots have negative signature
Simple closed curves in the plane can be mapped to nontrivial knots under the action of origami foldings that allow the paper to self-intersect. We show all tame knot types may be produced in this manner, motivating the development of a new…
We associate to every positive braid a braid monodromy group, generalizing the geometric monodromy group of an isolated plane curve singularity. If the closure of the braid is a knot, we identify the corresponding group with a framed…
We investigate Fox's trapezoidal conjecture for alternating links. We show that it holds for diagrammatic Murasugi sums of special alternating links, where all sums involved have length less than three (which includes diagrammatic…
We prove that a special alternating knot does not decompose as a non-trivial band sum. This restricts concordances from special alternating knots, and we conjecture that special alternating knots are ribbon concordance minimal. We verify…
In this paper we will show how to classify Legendrian and transverse knots in the knot type of "sufficiently positive" cables of a knot in terms of the classification of the underlying knot. We will also completely explain the phenomena of…
A knot $K_1$ is said to be Gordian adjacent to a knot $K_2$ if $K_1$ is an intermediate knot on an unknotting sequence of $K_2$. We extend previous results on Gordian adjacency by showing sufficient conditions for Gordian adjacency between…
In this paper we give necessary and sufficient conditions for a knot type to admit non-loose Legendrian and transverse representatives in some overtwisted contact structure, classify all non-loose rational unknots in lens spaces, and…
A transverse knot is a knot that is transverse to the planes of the standard contact structure on real 3-space. In this paper we prove the Markov Theorem for transverse braids, which states that two transverse closed braids that are…
A knot k is called ``strongly (n-1)-trivial.'' if there exists a projection of k, such that one can choose n crossings of the projection with the property that making the crossing changes corresponding to any of the $2^{n}-1$ nontrivial…
A link in $S^{3}$ is a fully positive braid link if it is the closure of a positive braid that contains at least one full-twist. We show that a fully positive braid link is a satellite link if and only if it is the satellite of a fully…
Let S(D) be the surface produced by applying Seifert's algorithm to the oriented link diagram D. I prove that if D has no negative crossings then S(D) is a quasipositive Seifert surface, that is, S(D) embeds incompressibly on a fiber…
This paper gives new and elementary combinatorial topological proofs of the classification of unoriented and oriented rational knots and links. These proofs are based on the known classification of alternating knots through flyping, and the…
A famous result of Bennequin states that for any braid representative of the unknot the Bennequin number is negative. We will extend this result to all n-trivial closed n-braids. This is a class of infinitely many knots closed under taking…
Lorenz links and T-links are equivalent families by the work of Birman--Kofman. Lorenz links arise as periodic orbits of the Lorenz system, whereas T-links are closures of certain positive braids. Birman, Williams, and Franks showed that…
Given a link L in the 3-sphere, we ask whether the components of L bound disjoint, nullhomologous disks properly embedded in a simply-connected positive-definite smooth 4-manifold; the knot case has been studied extensively in work of…
We describe the Lorenz links generated by renormalizable Lorenz maps with reducible kneading invariant $(K_f^-,K_f^+)=(X,Y)*(S,W)$, in terms of the links corresponding to each factor. This gives one new kind of operation that permits us to…
It is shown that two braids represent transversally isotopic links if and only if one can pass from one braid to another by conjugations in braid groups, positive Markov moves, and their inverses.
In this paper, we show that a link which has a positive and almost alternating diagram is alternating, besides that a positive and non-alternating Montesinos link has an almost positive-alternating diagram.
We determine the prime strongly positive amphicheiral knots up to 16 crossings and show that a large fraction of them admit knot diagrams with a double symmetry (rotational symmetry for strongly positive amphicheirality and an additional…
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…