Related papers: Ropelength Criticality
For a knot or link K, let L(K) be the ropelength of K and Cr(K) be the crossing number of K. In this paper, we show that there exists a constant a>0 such that L(K) is bounded above by a Cr(K) ln^5 (Cr(K)) for any knot K. This result shows…
The ropelength of a knot is the minimum length required to tie it. Computational upper bounds have previously been computed for every prime knot with up to 11 crossings. Here, we present ropelength measurements for the 2176 knots with 12…
Knotted ribbons form an important topic in knot theory. They have applications in natural sciences, such as cyclic duplex DNA modeling. A flat knotted ribbon can be obtained by gently pulling a knotted ribbon tight so that it becomes flat…
A gordian unlink is a finite number of unknots that are not topologically linked, each with prescribed length and thickness, and that cannot be disentangled into the trivial link by an isotopy preserving length and thickness throughout. In…
A classical two-stranded rope can be made by twisting two identical strands together under strain. Despite being conceptually simple, the contact-equations for helically twisted identical strands have only been solved within the last 20…
Knots are commonly found in molecular chains such as DNA and proteins, and they have been considered to be useful models for structural analysis of these molecules. One interested quantity is the minimum number of monomers necessary to…
The Moebius energy of a knot is an energy functional for smooth curves based on an idea of self-repelling. If a knot has a thick tubular neighborhood, we would intuitively expect the energy to be low. In this paper, we give explicit bounds…
We derive and analyze the low-energy theory of superconductivity in carbon nanotube ropes. A rope is modelled as an array of metallic nanotubes, taking into account phonon-mediated as well as Coulomb interactions, and arbitrary Cooper pair…
We investigate the sliding strength of thin filaments in frictional contact with a translating cylinder, perpendicular to the filaments' axes, in knotted (clove hitch) and unknotted (capstan) configurations. Recent work reported superlinear…
We describe several configurations of clasped ropes which are balanced and thus critical for the Gehring ropelength problem of arXiv:math.DG/0402212.
Given a knot $K$ parametrized by $r: [0,2\pi] \to \mathbb{R}^3$, we can define the electric potential on its complement by $\Phi(x) = \int_0^{2\pi} \frac{|r'(t)|}{|x - r(t)|}dt$. Physicists and knot theorists want to understand the critical…
Transition to turbulence in straight pipes occurs in spite of the linear stability of the laminar Hagen--Poiseuille flow if the amplitude of flow perturbations as well as the Reynolds number exceed a minimum threshold (subcritical…
We study scale-invariant geometric quantities associated with embedded closed curves in Euclidean three-space, with an emphasis on their behavior under optimization within a fixed knot type. Given a Euclidean-invariant and scale-covariant…
Classical bond percolation theory studies the conditions for a given point in a random graph to be connected to infinity, or "escape" to infinity, via a sequence of random edges. In this work, we present a higher-dimensional generalization…
We study the problem of finding curves of minimum pointwise-maximum arc-length derivative of curvature, here simply called curves of minimax spirality, among planar curves of fixed length with prescribed endpoints and tangents at the…
An account of the transversality conditions of variational problems gives rise to essential results in the analysis of different physical phenomena. This powerful and elegant approach has proven to be fruitful in a diversity of variational…
By means of sophisticated Monte Carlo methods, we investigate the conformational phase diagram of a simple model for flexible polymers with explicit thickness. The thickness constraint, which is introduced geometrically via the global…
How should we thread a single string through a set of tubes so that pulling the string taut self-assembles the tubes into a desired graph? While prior work [ITCS 2024] solves this problem with the goal of minimizing the length of string, we…
We deal with a robust notion of weak normals for a wide class of irregular curves defined in Euclidean spaces of high dimension. Concerning polygonal curves, the discrete normals are built up through a Gram-Schmidt procedure applied to…
A rope is a non-singular embedding of a closed interval into R^3, which sends the ends of the interval to some fixed points A and B such that |AB|=1. A rope is short if its length is less than 3. The main result of the paper is that the…