Related papers: Computing closed essential surfaces in knot comple…
We present a practical algorithm to determine the minimal genus of non-orientable spanning surfaces for 2-bridge knots, called the crosscap numbers. We will exhibit a table of crosscap numbers of 2-bridge knots up to 12crossings (all 362 of…
We show that if a knot or link has n thin levels when put in thin position then its exterior contains a collection of n disjoint, non-parallel, planar, meridional, essential surfaces. A corollary is that there are at least n/3 tetrahedra in…
Extending methods first used by Casson, we show how to verify a hyperbolic structure on a finite triangulation of a closed 3-manifold using interval arithmetic methods. A key ingredient is a new theoretical result (akin to a theorem by…
It is natural to ask how many isotopy classes of embedded essential surfaces lie in a given 3-manifold. The first bounds on the number of such surfaces were exponential, using normal surfaces. More recently, by restricting to alternating…
We show the existence of infinitely many knot exteriors where each of which contains meridional essential surfaces of any genus and (even) number of boundary components. That is, the compact surfaces that have a meridional essential…
The classical NP-complete problem Vertex Cover requires us to determine whether a graph contains at most $k$ vertices that cover all edges. In spite of its intractability, the problem can be solved in FPT time for parameter $k$ by various…
Understanding ideal points in the character varieties of knot complements has led to a number of important invariants for 3-manifolds. Ohtsuki (1994) counted the ideal points for character varieties of 2-bridge knot complements, and he made…
A knot in a thickened surface $K$ is a smooth embedding $K:S^1 \rightarrow \Sigma \times [0,1]$, where $\Sigma$ is a closed, connected, orientable surface. There is a bijective correspondence between knots in $S^2 \times [0,1]$ and knots in…
We generalize the results of [AS], finding large classes of totally geodesic Seifert surfaces in hyperbolic knot and link complements, each the lift of a rigid 2-orbifold embedded in some hyperbolic 3-orbifold. In addition, we provide a…
We study a canonical spanning surface obtained from a knot or link diagram depending on a given Kauffman state, and give a sufficient condition for the surface to be essential. By using the essential surface, we can see the triviality and…
We resolve a case of the oriented knot complement conjecture by showing that knots in an orientable circle bundle $N$ over a genus $g \geq 2$ surface $S$ are determined by their complements. We apply this to the setting of canonical knots…
We present an algorithm for computing the prime factorisation of a knot, which is practical in the following sense: using Regina, we give an implementation that works well for inputs of reasonable size, including prime knots from the…
In this article we discuss applications of neural networks to recognising knots and, in particular, to the unknotting problem. One of motivations for this study is to understand how neural networks work on the example of a problem for which…
The topological underpinnings are presented for a new algorithm which answers the question: `Is a given knot the unknot?' The algorithm uses the braid foliation technology of Bennequin and of Birman and Menasco. The approach is to consider…
We exhibit an algorithm to determine the bridge number of a hyperbolic knot in the 3-sphere. The proof uses adaptations of almost normal surface theory for compact surfaces with boundary in ideally triangulated knot exteriors.
We fully generalize a previously-developed computational geometry tool [1] to perform large-scale simulations of arbitrary two-dimensional faceted surfaces $z = h(x,y)$. Our method uses a three-component facet/edge/junction storage model,…
This article is concerned with locally flatly immersed surfaces in simply-connected $4$-manifolds where the complement of the surface has fundamental group $\mathbb{Z}$. Once the genus and number of double points are fixed, we classify such…
Normal surface theory is a central tool in algorithmic three-dimensional topology, and the enumeration of vertex normal surfaces is the computational bottleneck in many important algorithms. However, it is not well understood how the number…
The operation of crushing a normal surface has proven to be a powerful tool in computational $3$-manifold topology, with applications both to triangulation complexity and to algorithms. The main difficulty with crushing is that it can…
Knots are intricate structures that cannot be unambiguously distinguished with any single topological invariant. Momentum space knots, in particular, have been elusive due to their requisite finely tuned long-ranged hoppings. Even if…