Related papers: The Two Eyes Lemma: a linking problem for horoball…

We present three large families of new examples of plumbed 3-manifolds that bound rational homology 4-balls. These are constructed using two operations, also defined here, that preserve the lack of a lattice embedding obstruction to…

We study contact structures compatible with genus one open book decompositions with one boundary component. Any monodromy for such an open book can be written as a product of Dehn twists around dual non-separating curves in the…

A central problem in low-dimensional topology asks which homology $3$-spheres bound contractible $4$-manifolds or homology $4$-balls. In this paper, we address this question for plumbed $3$-manifolds and we present two new infinite…

Motivated by a question of Neumann and Reid, we study whether Dehn fillings on all but one cusp of a hyperbolic link complement can produce infinite families of knot complements with hidden symmetries which geometrically converge to the…

Two knots are homology concordant if they are smoothly concordant in a homology cobordism. The group $\hat{\mathcal{C}}_{\mathbb{Z}}$ (resp. $\mathcal{C}_{\mathbb{Z}}$) was previously defined as the set of knots in homology spheres that…

The isoperimetric problem is one of the oldest in geometry and it consists of finding a surface of minimum area that encloses a given volume $V$. It is particularly important in physics because of its strong relation with stability, and…

Many three dimensional manifolds are two-fold branched covers of the three dimensional sphere. However, there are some that are not. This paper includes exposition about two-fold branched covers and many examples. It shows that there are…

For some families of two-bridge knots, including double-twist knots with genus at least four, we determine precisely the set of integers $n>1$ such that the fundamental group of the $n$-fold cyclic branched cover of the 3-sphere along these…

Knot contact homology is an ambient isotopy invariant of knots and links in $\mathbb R^3$. The purpose of this paper is to extend this definition to an ambient isotopy invariant of tangles and prove that gluing of tangles gives a gluing…

The interplay of geometrical and topological entanglement in semiflexible knotted polymer rings confined inside a spherical cavity is investigated using advanced numerical methods. By using stringent and robust algorithms for locating…

The unknot U in S^4 has non-unique smooth spanning 3-balls up to isotopy fixing U. Equivalently there are properly embedded non-separating 3-balls in S^1xB^3 not properly isotopic to 1xB^3. More generally there exist non-separating…

We study the relationship between fibered ribbon 1-knots and fibered ribbon 2-knots by studying fibered slice disks with handlebody fibers. We give a characterization of fibered homotopy-ribbon disks and give analogues of the Stallings…

This paper gives mathematical models for flat knotted ribbons, and makes specific conjectures for the least length of ribbon (for a given width) needed to tie the trefoil knot and the figure eight knot. The first conjecture states that (for…

Four packings of hyperbolic 3-space are known to yield the optimal packing density of $0.85328\dots$. They are realized in the regular tetrahedral and cubic Coxeter honeycombs with Schl\"afli symbols $\{3,3,6 \}$ and $\{4,3,6\}$. These…

In this paper and its sequel, we give a necessary and sufficient condition for two essential simple loops on a 2-bridge sphere in an even Heckoid orbifold for a 2-bridge link to be homotopic in the orbifold. We also give a necessary and…

We show that, in the unit tangent bundle of a hyperbolic orbisphere with cone points of order 3, 3, 4, the lift of the shortest periodic geodesic is homeomorphic to the complement of the figure-eight knot in the 3-sphere. The proof…

Following Riley's work, for each 2-bridge link $K(r)$ of slope $r\in\QQ$ and an integer or a half-integer $n$ greater than 1, we introduce the {\it Heckoid orbifold $\orbs(r;n)$} and the {\it Heckoid group $\Hecke(r;n)=\pi_1(\orbs(r;n))$ of…

We provide a diagrammatic computation for the bilinear form, which is defined as the pairing between the (relative) cup products with every local coefficients and every integral homology 2-class of every links in the 3-sphere. As a…

We use a recently developed coarse-grained model for DNA to study kissing complexes formed by hybridization of complementary hairpin loops. The binding of the loops is topologically constrained because their linking number must remain…

Knots are familiar entities that appear at a captivating nexus of art, technology, mathematics, and science. As topologically stable objects within field theories, they have been speculatively proposed as explanations for diverse persistent…