Related papers: Some Baumslag-Solitar groups are two bridges virtu…
Kishino's knot is not detected by the fundamental group or the bracket polynomial; these invariants cannot differentiate between Kishino's knot and the unknot. However, we can show that Kishino's knot is not equivalent to unknot by applying…
In this paper we define and give examples of a family of polynomial invariants of virtual knots and links. They arise by considering certain 2$\times$2 matrices with entries in a possibly non-commutative ring, for example the quaternions.…
The Baumslag-Solitar groups: BS(m,n)=<x,y| x y^{m} x^{-1} = y^{n}> are some of the simplest interesting infinite groups which are not lattices in Lie groups. They have been studied in depth from the point of view of combinatorial group…
This paper has two parts, on Baumslag-Solitar groups and on general G-trees. In the first part we establish bounds for stable commutator length (scl) in Baumslag-Solitar groups. For a certain class of elements, we further show that scl is…
In this paper we introduce a new invariant of virtual knots and links that is non-trivial for infinitely many virtuals, but is trivial on classical knots and links. The invariant is initially be expressed in terms of a relative of the…
We exhibit a weakly aperiodic tile set for Baumslag-Solitar groups, and prove that the domino problem is undecidable on these groups. A consequence of our construction is the existence of an arecursive tile set on Baumslag-Solitar groups.
For any given number of crossings $c$, there exists a formula to determine the number of 2-bridge knots of $c$ crossings, and indeed it is a simple matter to actually construct presentations of these knots. However, the determination of…
We prove that the isomorphism problem is decidable for generalized Baumslag-Solitar (GBS) groups with one quasi-conjugacy class and full support gaps. In order to do so we introduce a family of invariants that fully characterize the…
We show that the 3-fold cyclic branched cover of any genus 2 two-bridge knot $K_{[-2q,2s,-2t,2l]}$ is an L-space and its fundamental group is not left-orderable. Therefore the family of 3-fold cyclic branched cover of any genus 2 two-bridge…
We study the equivariant concordance classes of two-bridge knots, providing an easy formula to compute their butterfly polynomial, and we give two different proofs that no two-bridge knot is equivariantly slice. Finally, we introduce a new…
We construct $2$-generator non-Hopfian groups $G_m, m=3, 4, 5, \dots$, where each $G_m$ has a specific presentation $G_m=\langle a, b \, | \, u_{r_{m,0}}=u_{r_{m,1}}=u_{r_{m,2}}= \cdots =1 \rangle$ which satisfies small cancellation…
We show that a two-bridge ribbon knot $K(m^2 , m k \pm 1)$ with $m > k >0$ and $(m,k)=1$ admits a symmetric union presentation with partial knot which is a two-bridge knot $K(m,k)$. Similar descriptions for all the other two-bridge ribbon…
Given a group endowed with a Z/2-valued morphism we associate a Gauss diagram theory, and show that for a particular choice of the group these diagrams encode faithfully virtual knots on a given arbitrary surface. This theory contains all…
Residual torsion-free nilpotence has proven to be an important property for knot groups with applications to bi-orderability and ribbon concordance. Mayland proposed a strategy to show that a two-bridge knot group has a commutator subgroup…
We prove Riley's conjecture on the number of parabolic SL(2,R) representations of 2-bridge knot groups.
Given an abelian group $A$ and a Lie group $G$, we construct a bilinear pairing from $A\times\pi_1({\mathcal R})$ to $\pi_1(G)$, where $\mathcal R$ is a subvariety of the variety of representations $A\to G$. In the case where $A$ is the…
The connected sum of two flat virtual knots depends on the choice of diagrams and basepoints. We show that any minimal crossing diagram of a composite flat virtual knot is a connected sum diagram. We also show the crossing number of flat…
Symmetries of knots have been studied extensively, and strongly invertible knots are one of them. Lamm defined the equivariant crossing number $c_t(K)$, the minimum crossing number among all symmetric diagrams for a strongly invertible knot…
We determine all generalized Baumslag-Solitar groups (finitely generated groups acting on a tree with all stabilizers infinite cyclic) which are quotients of a given Baumslag-Solitar group BS(m,n), and (when BS(m,n) is not Hopfian) which of…
We show that all residually finite generalized Baumslag-Solitar groups of rank $n \geq 1$, defined on a finite and connected graph, are self-similar. Furthermore we prove that all residually finite fundamental groups of (finite, connected)…