Related papers: Knots with small lattice stick numbers
We provide explicit formulas for the Alexander polynomial of pretzel knots and establish several immediate corollaries, including the characterization of pretzel knots with a trivial Alexander polynomial. As an application, we construct a…
We investigate Fox colorings of knots that are 17-colorable. Precisely, we prove that any 17-colorable knot has a diagram such that exactly 6 among the seventeen colors are assigned to the arcs of the diagram.
The $T$-genus of a knot is the minimal number of borromean-type triple points on a normal singular disk with no clasp bounded by the knot; it is an upper bound for the slice genus. Kawauchi, Shibuya and Suzuki characterized the slice knots…
We show that the problem of constructing a real rational knot of a reasonably low degree can be reduced to an algebraic problem involving the pure braid group: expressing an associated element of the pure braid group in terms of the…
We present a class of knots associated with labelled generic immersions of intervals into the plane and compute their Gordian numbers and 4-dimensional invariants. At least 10% of the knots in Rolfsen's table belong to this class of knots.…
We define the symmetric braid index $b_s(K)$ of a ribbon knot $K$ to be the smallest index of a braid whose closure yields a symmetric union diagram of $K$, and derive a Khovanov-homological characterisation of knots with $b_s(K)$ at most…
We show that nontrivial classical pretzel knots L(p,q,r) are hyperbolic with eight exceptions which are torus knots. We find Conway polynomials of n-pretzel links using a new computation tree. As applications, we compute the genera of…
In the early 1980's Mike Freedman showed that all knots with trivial Alexander polynomial are topologically slice (with fundamental group Z). This paper contains the first new examples of topologically slice knots. In fact, we give a…
The unknotting number of a knot is bounded from below by its slice genus. It is a well-known fact that the genera and unknotting numbers of torus knots coincide. In this note we characterize quasipositive knots for which the genus bound is…
For every knot K with stick number k there is a knotted polyhedral torus of knot type K with 3k vertices. We prove that at least 3k-2 vertices are necessary.
We present a lower bound on the stable $4$-genus of a knot based on Casson-Gordon $\tau$-signatures. We compute the lower bound for an infinite family of knots, the twist knots, and show that a twist knot is torsion in the knot concordance…
We construct an infinite collection of knots with the property that any knot in this family has $n$-string essential tangle decompositions for arbitrarily high $n$.
We compute the linking number of two modular knots in the space $\text{PSL}(2, \mathbb{Z})\backslash\text{PSL}(2, \mathbb{R})$ with the trefoil filled in, which answers a question posed by Ghys in 2007. This computation is realized through…
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…
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…
The space of n-sided polygons embedded in three-space consists of a smooth manifold in which points correspond to piecewise linear or ``geometric'' knots, while paths correspond to isotopies which preserve the geometric structure of these…
In this paper we examine the relative knotting probabilities in a lattice model of ring polymers confined in a cavity. The model is of a lattice knot of size $n$ in the cubic lattice, confined to a cube of side-length $L$ and with volume…
We investigate the minimal number of links and knots in complete partite graphs. We provide exact values or bounds on the minimal number of links for all complete partite graphs with all but 4 vertices in one partition, or with 9 vertices…
We show that the minimum number of sticks required to construct a non-paneled knotless embedding of $K_4$ is 9 and of $K_5$ is 12 or 13. We use our results about $K_4$ to show that the probability that a random linear embedding of $K_{3,3}$…
Let $c(K)$ denote the crossing number of a knot $K$ and let $K_1\# K_2$ denote the connected sum of two oriented knots $K_1$ and $K_2$. It is a very old unsolved question that whether $c(K_1\# K_2)=c(K_1)+c(K_2)$. In this paper we show that…