Related papers: Nullification of knots and links

This paper is expository and is accessible to students. We define simple invariants of knots or links (linking number, Arf-Casson invariants and Alexander-Conway polynomials) motivated by interesting results whose statements are accessible…

Network tomography aims at inferring internal network characteristics based on measurements at the edge of the network. In loss tomography, in particular, the characteristic of interest is the loss rate of individual links and multicast…

Musical gestures connect the symbolic layer of the score to the physical layer of sound. I focus here on the mathematical theory of musical gestures, and I propose its generalization to include braids and knots. In this way, it is possible…

An alternating distance is a link invariant that measures how far away a link is from alternating. We study several alternating distances and demonstrate that there exist families of links for which the difference between certain…

This paper introduces a new algebra, the crossing algebra, that is applied to count the number of components for arborescent knots, links, tangles or states (of a state polynomial expansion such as the Kauffman bracket). This algebra is…

Data science offers a powerful tool to understand objects in multiple sciences. In this paper we utilize concept of data science, most notably topological data analysis, to extend our understanding of knot theory. This approach provides a…

Besides offering a friendly introduction to knot homologies and quantum curves, the goal of these lectures is to review some of the concrete predictions that follow from the physical interpretation of knot homologies. In particular, this…

We show that determining the crossing number of a link is NP-hard. For some weaker notions of link equivalence, we also show NP-completeness.

We use Heegaard Floer homology to give obstructions to unknotting a knot with a single crossing change. These restrictions are particularly useful in the case where the knot in question is alternating. As an example, we use them to classify…

The weight of links in a network is often related to the similarity of the nodes. Here, we introduce a simple tunable measure for analysing the similarity of nodes across different link weights. In particular, we use the measure to analyze…

Knot contact homology is an invariant of knots derived from Legendrian contact homology which has numerous connections to the knot group. We use basic properties of knot groups to prove that knot contact homology detects every torus knot.…

The height of a knotoid is a measure of how far it is from being a knot. Here we define the positive and negative parts of the height, and we prove that they determine the unsigned height. Some polynomial invariants provide lower bounds for…

A knotted ribbon is one of physical aspect of a knot. A folded ribbon knot is a depiction of a knot obtained by folding a long and thin rectangular strip to become flat. The ribbonlength of a knot type can be defined as the minimum length…

While the problem of computing the genus of a knot is now fairly well understood, no algorithm is known for its four-dimensional variants, both in the smooth and in the topological locally flat category. In this article, we investigate a…

In a previous work, the first and third authors studied a random knot model for all two-bridge knots using billiard table diagrams. Here we present a closed formula for the distribution of the crossing numbers of such random knots. We also…

This paper formulates a generalization of our work on quantum knots to explain how to make quantum versions of algebraic, combinatorial and topological structures. We include a description of previous work on the construction of Hilbert…

Using unknotting number, we introduce a link diagram invariant of Hass and Nowik type, which changes at most by 2 under a Reidemeister move. As an application, we show that a certain infinite sequence of diagrams of the trivial…

Gel electrophoresis is a powerful experimental method to probe the topology of DNA and other biopolymers. While there is a large body of experimental work which allows us to accurately separate different topoisomers of a molecule, a full…

We define and compare several natural ways to compute the bridge number of a knot diagram. We study bridge numbers of crossing number minimizing diagrams, as well as the behavior of diagrammatic bridge numbers under the connected sum…

We define an invariant of transverse links in the standard contact 3-sphere as a distinguished element of the Khovanov homology of the link. The quantum grading of this invariant is the self-linking number of the link. For knots, this gives…