Related papers: Bypasses for rectangular diagrams. Proof of Jones'…
In the note we study Legendrian and transverse knots in rationally null-homologous knot types. In particular we generalize the standard definitions of self-linking number, Thurston-Bennequin invariant and rotation number. We then prove a…
In this article we give necessary and sufficient conditions for two triples of integers to be realized as the Thurston-Bennequin number and the rotation number of a Legendrian theta-graph with all cycles unknotted. We show that these…
We give a simple unified proof for several disparate bounds on Thurston-Bennequin number for Legendrian knots and self-linking number for transverse knots in R^3, and provide a template for possible future bounds. As an application, we give…
We prove a Kauffman-Murasugi-Thistlethwaite theorem for alternating links in thickened surfaces. It states that any reduced alternating diagram of a link in a thickened surface has minimal crossing number, and any two reduced alternating…
The Thurston-Bennequin invariant provides one notion of self-linking for any homologically-trivial Legendrian curve in a contact three-manifold. Here we discuss related analytic notions of self-linking for Legendrian knots in Euclidean…
In this article, we explore a polynomial invariant for Legendrian knots which is a natural extension of Jones polynomial for (topological) knots. To this end, a new type of skein relation is introduced for the front projections of…
We show that if a classical knot diagram satisfies a certain combinatorial condition then it is minimal with respect to the number of classical crossings. This statement is proved by using the Kauffman bracket and the construction of atoms…
Theory is developed for linear-quadratic at infinity generating families for Legendrian knots in R^3. It is shown that the unknot with maximal Thurston--Bennequin invariant of -1 has a unique linear-quadratic at infinity generating family,…
We derive a relative version of the slicing Bennequin inequalities for cobordant Legendrian knots, and review a few proofs of the result.
We define half grid diagrams and prove every link is half grid presentable by constructing a canonical half grid pair (which gives rise to a grid diagram of some special type) associated with an element in the oriented Thompson group. We…
The problem of classification of Legendrian knots (links) up to isotopy in the class of Legendrian embeddings (Legendrian isotopy) naturally leads to the following two subproblems. The first of them is: which combinations of the three…
We show that there exists a Legendrian knot with maximal Thurston-Bennequin invariant whose contact homology is trivial. We also provide another Legendrian knot which has the same knot type and classical invariants but nonvanishing contact…
The recent proof by Bigelow and Krammer that the braid groups are linear opens the possibility of applications to the study of knots and links. It was proved by the first author and Menasco that any closed braid representative of the unknot…
The present paper is an introduction to a combinatorial theory arising as a natural generalisation of classical and virtual knot theory. There is a way to encode links by a class of `realisable' graphs. When passing to generic graphs with…
We classify Legendrian knots of topological type $7_6$ having maximal Thurston--Bennequin number confirming the corresponding conjectures of Chongchitmate--Ng.
We show that there is a knot satisfying the property that for each minimal crossing number diagram of the knot and each single crossing of the diagram, changing the crossing results in a diagram for a knot whose unknotting number is at…
We establish an upper bound for the Thurston-Bennequin number of a Legendrian link using the Khovanov homology of the underlying topological link. This bound is sharp in particular for all alternating links, and knots with nine or fewer…
An open question akin to the slice-ribbon conjecture asks whether every ribbon knot can be represented as a symmetric union. Next to this basic existence question sits the question of uniqueness of such representations. Eisermann and Lamm…
Final revision. To appear in the Journal of Differential Geometry. This paper studies knots that are transversal to the standard contact structure in $\reals^3$, bringing techniques from topological knot theory to bear on their transversal…
We introduce and study strongly invertible Legendrian links in the standard contact three-dimensional space. We establish the equivariant analogs of basic results separately well-known for strongly invertible and Legendrian links, i.e. the…