Related papers: The quandle and group for higher-dimensional and v…
This paper studies an algebraic invariant of virtual knots called the biquandle. The biquandle generalizes the fundamental group and the quandle of virtual knots. The approach taken in this paper to the biquandle emphasizes understanding…
Defined by Joyce and Matveev, the fundamental quandle is a complete invariant of oriented classical knots. We consider invariants of knots defined from quotients of the fundamental quandle. In particular, we introduce the fundamental Latin…
Virtual knots, defined by Kauffman, provide a natural generalization of classical knots. Most invariants of knots extend in a natural way to give invariants of virtual knots. In this paper we study the fundamental groups of virtual knots…
We show that the fundamental quandle defines a functor from the oriented tangle category to a suitably defined quandle category. Given a tangle decomposition of a link $L$, the fundamental quandle of $L$ may be obtained from the fundamental…
The fundamental quandle is a powerful invariant of knots and links, but it is difficult to describe in detail. It is often useful to look at quotients of the quandle, especially finite quotients. One natural quotient introduced by Joyce is…
This paper is a very brief introduction to knot theory. It describes knot coloring by quandles, the fundamental group of a knot complement, and handle-decompositions of knot complements.
In this paper we study the chord index of virtual knots, which can be thought of as an extension of the chord parity. We show how to use the chord index to define finite type invariants of virtual knots. The notions of indexed Jones…
We study the structure of the augmented fundamental quandle of a knot whose complement contains an incompressible torus. We obtain the relationship between the fundamental quandle of a satellite knot and the fundamental quandles/groups of…
The isomorphism type of the knot quandle introduced by Joyce is a complete invariant of tame knots. Whether two quandles are isomorphic is in practice difficult to determine; we show that this question is provably hard: isomorphism of…
Non-classical virtual knots may have non-isomorphic upper and lower quandles. We exploit this property to define the quandle difference invariant, which can detect non-classicality by comparing the numbers of homomorphisms into a finite…
We construct elements of the third quandle homology groups of knot quandles, which are called the shadow fundamental classes. They play the same roles for the shadow quandle cocycle invariants of knots as the fundamental classes of knot…
We show that any virtual or welded period of a classical knot $K$ can be realized as a classical period. A direct consequence is that a classical knot admits only finitely many virtual or welded periods.
The fundamental quandle is a complete invariant for unoriented tame knots \cite{JO, Ma} and non-split links \cite{FR}. The proof involves proving a relationship between the components of the fundamental quandle and the cosets of the…
We define a generalization of virtual links to arbitrary dimensions by extending the geometric definition due to Carter et al. We show that many homotopy type invariants for classical links extend to invariants of virtual links. We also…
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…
Joyce observed that the Alexander invariant and the medial quandle of a classical knot are equivalent to each other, as invariants. In the present paper, we discuss the rather complicated extension of Joyce's observation to several…
We enhance the quandle counting invariants of oriented classical and virtual knots and links using a construction similar to quandle modules but inspired by symplectic quandle operations rather than Alexander quandle operations. Given a…
Virtual racks and virtual quandles are nonassociative algebraic structures based on the Reidemeister moves of virtual knots. In this note, we enumerate virtual dihedral quandles and several families of virtual permutation racks and virtual…
We show that for many classical knots one can find generalized torsion in the fundamental group of its complement, commonly called the knot group. It follows that such a group is not bi-orderable. Examples include all torus knots, the…
Three new knot invariants are defined using cocycles of the generalized quandle homology theory that was proposed by Andruskiewitsch and Gra\~na. We specialize that theory to the case when there is a group action on the coefficients. First,…