Related papers: Braid equivalences and the $L$--moves
It is well-known:Suppose there are three 1-dimensional links $K_+$, $K_-$, $K_0$ such that $K_+$, $K_-$, and $K_0$ coincide out of a 3-ball $B$ trivially embedded in $S^3$ and that $K_+\cap B$, $K_-\cap B$, and $K_0\cap B$ are drawn as…
In this paper, we introduce a notion of clock moves for spanning trees in plane graphs. This enables us to develop a spanning tree model of an Alexander polynomial for a plane graph and prove the unimodal property of its associate…
Link equivalence up to isotopy in a 3-space is the problem that lies at the root of knot theory, and is important in 3-dimensional topology and geometry. We consider its restriction to alternating links, given by two alternating diagrams…
Relative self-linking and linking "numbers" for pairs of knots in oriented 3-manifolds are defined in terms of intersection invariants of immersed surfaces in 4-manifolds. The resulting concordance invariants generalize the usual…
In this paper we discuss algebraic, combinatorial and topological properties of singular virtual braids. On the algebraic side we state the relations between classical and virtual singular objects, in addition we discuss a Birman-like…
Two natural generalizations of knot theory are the study of spatial graphs and virtual knots. Our goal is to unify these two approaches into the study of virtual spatial graphs. This paper is a survey, and does not contain any new results.…
The deep connection among braids, knots and topological physics has provided valuable insights into studying topological states in various physical systems. However, identifying distinct braid groups and knot topology embedded in…
We consider branes as "points" in an infinite dimensional brane space ${\cal M}$ with a prescribed metric. Branes move along the geodesics of ${\cal M}$. For a particular choice of metric the equations of motion are equivalent to the well…
An extension of the Artin Braid Group with new operators that generate double and triple intersections is considered. The extended Alexander theorem, relating intersecting closed braids and intersecting knots is proved for double and triple…
In this paper, we introduce an equivalence relation on the set of local moves and classify local moves, called the extended $ST$-moves, up to the equivalence. Moreover, by inducing a binary relation on the set of equivalence classes of…
We construct nontrivial L-equivalence between curves of genus one and degree five, and between elliptic surfaces of multisection index five. These results give the first examples of L-equivalence for curves (necessarily over…
This article is an exposition of certain connections between the braid groups, classical homotopy groups of the 2-sphere, as well as Lie algebras attached to the descending central series of pure braid groups arising as Vassiliev invariants…
We introduce the concept of `claspers,' which are surfaces in 3-manifolds with some additional structure on which surgery operations can be performed. Using claspers we define for each positive integer k an equivalence relation on links…
We introduce ribbon-moves of 2-knots, which are operations to make 2-knots into new 2-knots by local operations in B^4. (We do not assume the new knots is not equivalent to the old ones.) Let L_1 and L_2 be 2-links. Then the following hold.…
Extending the methods from our previous work on quantum knots and quantum graphs, we describe a general procedure for quantizing a large class of mathematical structures which includes, for example, knots, graphs, groups, algebraic…
Recently Witten introduced a type IIB brane construction with certain boundary conditions to study knot invariants and Khovanov homology. The essential ingredients used in his work are the topologically twisted N = 4 Yang-Mills theory,…
We consider ribbon n-knots for n\geq 2. For such knots we define a set of moves on ribbon disks, and show that any two ribbon disks for isotopic knots are related by a finite sequence of such moves and ambient isotopies. Using this we are…
The braid indices of most links remain unknown as there is no known universal method that can be used to determine the braid index of an arbitrary knot. This is also the case for alternating knots. In this paper, we show that if $K$ is an…
We describe an action of the concordance group of knots in the three-sphere on concordances of knots in arbitrary 3-manifolds. As an application we define the notion of almost-concordance between knots. After some basic results, we prove…
We give a new proof of Markov's classical theorem relating any two closed braid representations of the same knot or link. The proof is based upon ideas in a forthcoming paper by the authors, "Stabilization in the braid groups". The new…