Related papers: Prime component-preservingly amphicheiral link wit…

We provide necessary conditions for the Alexander polynomials of algebraically split component-preservingly amphicheiral links. We raise a conjecture that the Alexander polynomial of an algebraically split component-preservingly…

We determine prime amphicheiral links with at least 2 components and up to 11 crossings. There are 27 such links. We check also special amphicheiralities. Most of prime links with up to 11 crossings are detected not to be amphicheiral by a…

A partial order on the set of prime knots can be defined by the existence of an epimorphism between knot groups. We prove that all the prime knots with up to $6$ crossings are minimal. We also show that each fibered knot with the…

It is known that the arc index of alternating knots is the minimal crossing number plus two and the arc index of prime nonalternating knots is less than or equal to the minimal crossing number. We study some cases when the arc index is…

Let $K$ be a prime knot in $S^3$ and $G(K)=\pi_1(S^3-K)$ the knot group. We write $K_1 \geq K_2$ if there exists a surjective homomorphism from $G(K_1)$ onto $G(K_2)$. In this paper, we determine this partial order on the set of prime knots…

Every knot can be embedded in the union of finitely many half planes with a common boundary line in such a way that the portion of the knot in each half plane is a properly embedded arc. The minimal number of such half planes is called the…

Using an involved study of the Jones polynomial, we determine, as our main result, the crossing numbers of (prime) amphicheiral knots. As further applications, we show that several classes of links, including semiadequate links and…

For a knot K, the concordance crosscap number, c(K), is the minimum crosscap number among all knots concordant to K. Building on work of G. Zhang, which studied the determinants of knots with c(K) < 2, we apply the Alexander polynomial to…

There are infinitely many pretzel links with the same Alexander polynomial (actually with trivial Alexander polynomial). By contrast, in this note we revisit the Jones polynomial of pretzel links and prove that, given a natural number S,…

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 the existence of a smoothly doubly slice, amphicheiral knot with Alexander polynomial 1 and unknotting number 5.

We give examples of knots with some unusual properties of the crossing number of positive diagrams or strand number of positive braid representations. In particular we show that positive braid knots may not have positive minimal (strand…

A knot is a closed loop in space without self-intersection. Two knots are equivalent if there is a self homeomorphism of space bringing one onto the other. An arc presentation is an embedding of a knot in the union of finitely many half…

We give infinitely many $2$-component links with unknotted components which are topologically concordant to the Hopf link, but not smoothly concordant to any $2$-component link with trivial Alexander polynomial. Our examples are pairwise…

The unknotting number of a knot is the minimum number of crossings one must change to turn that knot into the unknot. The algebraic unknotting number is the minimum number of crossing changes needed to transform a knot into an Alexander…

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…

We give a survey of some recent papers by the authors and Masaaki Wada relating the twisted Alexander polynomial with a partial order on the set of prime knots. We also give examples and pose open problems.

Ito-Takimura recently defined a splice-unknotting number $u^-(D)$ for knot diagrams. They proved that this number provides an upper bound for the crosscap number of any prime knot, asking whether equality holds in the alternating case. We…

We enumerate and show tables of minimal diagrams for all prime knots up to the triple-crossing number equal to five. We derive a minimal generating set of oriented moves connecting triple-crossing diagrams of the same oriented knot. We also…

The splitting number of a link is the minimal number of crossing changes between different components required, on any diagram, to convert it to a split link. We introduce new techniques to compute the splitting number, involving covering…