Related papers: Counterexamples to the quadrisecant approximation …
Chasles' Quadrilateral Theorem is a classical statement about four tangents to a conic that simultaneously circumscribe a circle. In its various formulations, it relates the concurrence of certain lines to the existence of confocal conics…
In this paper, we introduce a new type of relation between knots called the descendant relation. One knot $H$ is a descendant of another knot $K$ if $H$ can be obtained from a minimal crossing diagram of $K$ by some number of crossing…
New bounds on the number of similar or directly similar copies of a pattern within a finite subset of the line or the plane are proved. The number of equilateral triangles whose vertices all lie within an $n$-point subset of the plane is…
We establish the slice-ribbon conjecture for a large family of Montesinos' knots by means of Donaldson's theorem on the intersection forms of definite 4-manifolds.
A polynomial is presented that models a topological knot in a unique manner. It distinguishes all types of knots including the orientation and has a group theory interpretation. The topologies may be labeled via a number, which upon a base…
An alternating distance is a link invariant that measures how far away a link is from alternating. We study several alternating distances and demonstrate that there exist families of links for which the difference between certain…
A knot K is called Gordian adjacent to a knot L if there exists an unknotting sequence for L containing K. We provide a sufficient condition for Gordian adjacency of torus knots via the study of knots in the thickened torus. We also…
The Jones unknot conjecture states that the Jones polynomial distinguishes the unknot from nontrivial knots. We prove it for knots up to 23 crossings.
We show that one of the Cappell-Shaneson knot complements admits an extraordinarily small triangulation, containing only two 4-dimensional simplices.
The concordance genus of a knot is the least genus of any knot in its concordance class. It is bounded above by the genus of the knot, and bounded below by the slice genus, two well-studied invariants. In this paper we consider the…
A knot $K$ is called $n$-adjacent to a knot $K'$ if there is a set of $n$ crossing circles $\mathcal C$ in $K$ so that a generalized crossing change at any nonempty subset of crossings in $\mathcal C$ yields $K'$. In this paper, the authors…
A polynomial knot is a smooth embedding $\kappa: \real \to \real^n$ whose components are polynomials. The case $n = 3$ is of particular interest. It is both an object of real algebraic geometry as well as being an open ended topological…
The diagonals of a quadrilateral form four associated triangles, called half triangles. Each half triangle is bounded by two sides of the quadrilateral and one diagonal. If we locate a triangle center (such as the incenter, centroid,…
A symmetric quandle is a quandle with a good involution. For a knot in \$R^3\$, a knotted surface in \$R^4\$ or an \$n\$-manifold knot in \$R^{n+2}\$, the knot symmetric quandle is defined. We introduce the notion of a symmetric quandle…
We consider the method of alternating projections for finding a point in the intersection of two closed sets, possibly nonconvex. Assuming only the standard transversality condition (or a weaker version thereof), we prove local linear…
A ribbon is, intuitively, a smooth mapping of an annulus $S^1 \times I$ in 3-space having constant width $\varepsilon$. This can be formalized as a triple $(x,\varepsilon, \mathbf{u})$ where $x$ is smooth curve in 3-space and $\mathbf{u}$…
We consider the problem of deciding whether a polygonal knot in 3-dimensional Euclidean space is unknotted, capable of being continuously deformed without self-intersection so that it lies in a plane. We show that this problem, {\sc…
The simultaneous crossing number is a new knot invariant which is defined for strongly invertible knots having diagrams with two orthogonal transvergent axes of strong inversions. Because the composition of the two inversions gives a cyclic…
For a knot or link K, let L(K) be the ropelength of K and Cr(K) be the crossing number of K. In this paper, we show that there exists a constant a>0 such that L(K) is bounded above by a Cr(K) ln^5 (Cr(K)) for any knot K. This result shows…
We introduce three kinds of invariants of a virtual knot called the first, second, and third intersection polynomials. The definition is based on the intersection number of a pair of curves on a closed surface. The calculations of…