Related papers: Minimal braid representatives of quasipositive lin…
We study the negative band number of braids, knots, and links using Birman, Ko, and Lee's left-canonical form of a braid. As applications, we characterize up to conjugacy strongly quasipositive braids and almost strongly quasipositive…
We exhibit the first examples of links which are homologically thin but not quasi-alternating. To show that they are not quasi-alternating, we argue that none of their branched double-covers bounds a negative definite 4-manifold with…
It is well known that the minimum crossing number of an alternating link equals the number of crossings in any reduced alternating link diagram of the link. This remarkable result is an application of the Jones polynomial. In the case of…
In this note, we prove a lower bound for the positive kinkiness of a closed braid which we then use to derive an estimate for the positive kinkiness of a link in terms of its Seifert system. As an application, we show that certain pretzel…
This short note is about three-stranded pretzel knots that have an even number of crossings in one of the strands. We calculate the braid index of such knots and determine which of them are quasipositive. The main tools are the…
We provide a simple proof of the radial symmetry of any nonnegative minimizer for a general class of quasi-linear minimization problems.
We show that a link in an open book can be realized as a strongly quasipositive braid if and only if it bounds a Legendrian ribbon with respect to the associated contact structure. This generalizes a result due to Baader and Ishikawa for…
It has been conjectured that the algebraic crossing number of a link is uniquely determined in minimal braid representation. This conjecture is true for many classes of knots and links. The Morton-Franks-Williams inequality gives a lower…
Let S(D) be the surface produced by applying Seifert's algorithm to the oriented link diagram D. I prove that if D has no negative crossings then S(D) is a quasipositive Seifert surface, that is, S(D) embeds incompressibly on a fiber…
It is known that the minimal degree of the Jones polynomial of a positive knot is equal to its genus, and the minimal coefficient is 1. We extend this result to almost positive links and partly identify the 3 following coefficients for…
Virtual braids are a combinatorial generalization of braids. We present abstract braids as equivalence classes of braid diagrams on a surface, joining two distinguished boundary components. They are identified up to isotopy, compatibility,…
We find the minimal number of links in an embedding of any complete $k$-partite graph on 7 vertices (including $K_7$, which has at least 21 links). We give either exact values or upper and lower bounds for the minimal number of links for…
We give a sufficient condition for an almost alternating link diagram to represent a non-splittable link. The main theorem gives us a way to see if a given almost alternating link diagram represents a splittable link without increasing…
If L is an oriented link with $n$ components, then the rank of its Khovanov homology is at least $2^n$. We classify all the links whose Khovanov homology with Z/2-coefficients achieves this lower bound, and show that such links can be…
In this note, we complete the classification of quasi-alternating Montesinos links. We show that the quasi-alternating Montesinos links are precisely those identified independently by Qazaqzeh-Chbili-Qublan and Champanerkar-Ording. A…
We study the generalization of quasipositive links from the three-sphere to arbitrary closed, orientable three-manifolds. Our main result shows that the boundary of any smooth, properly embedded complex curve in a Stein domain is a…
We generalize an algorithm of Rudolph to establish that every link is topologically concordant to a strongly quasipositive link.
We prove that a virtual link diagrams satisfying two conditions on the Khovanov homology is minimal, that is, there is no virtual diagram representing the same link with smaller number of crossings. This approach works for both classical…
We provide a simple proof of the radial symmetry of any nonnegative minimizer for a general class of quasi-linear minimization problems
We define a limiting $\mathfrak{sl}_N$ Khovanov-Rozansky homology for semi-infinite positive multi-colored braids, and we show that this limiting homology categorifies a highest-weight projector for a large class of such braids. This…