Related papers: An Unknotting Index for Virtual Links

The algebraic unknotting number u_a(K) of a knot K was introduced by Hitoshi Murakami. It equals the minimal number of crossing changes needed to turn K into an Alexander polynomial one knot. In a previous paper the authors used the…

A virtual knot is an equivalence class of embeddings of $ S^1 $ into thickened (closed oriented) surfaces, up to self-diffeomorphism of the surface and certain handle stabilisations. The slice genus of a virtual knot is defined…

We study the minimum ribbonlength for immersed planar ribbon knots and links. Our approach is to embed the space of such knots and links into a larger more tractable space of disk diagrams. When length minimisers in disk diagram space are…

Given a knot K we introduce a new invariant coming from the Blanchfield pairing and we show that it gives a lower bound on the unknotting number of K. This lower bound subsumes the lower bounds given by the Levine-Tristram signatures, by…

We provide an algorithm to determine whether a link L admits a crossing change that turns it into a split link, under some fairly mild hypotheses on L. The algorithm also provides a complete list of all such crossing changes. It can…

Multi-virtual knot theory was introduced in $2024$ by the first author. In this paper, we initiate the study of algebraic invariants of multi-virtual links. After determining a generating set of (oriented) multi-virtual Reidemeister moves,…

An $n$-tuple $D=(d(1),\dots,d(n))$ is a \emph{feasible degree sequence} if there is a graph on $\{1,\dots,n\}$ such that $i$ has degree $d(i)$. Any such graph will have $m=\sum_{i=1}^n d(i)/2$ edges. Letting $G(D)$ be a graph chosen…

We describe a new class of minimal link diagrams. This class includes certain alternating diagrams, the standard diagrams of all torus links, and numerous homogeneous diagrams whose minimality has not been proven before. Besides, we…

A differential geometric characterization of the braid-index of a link is found. After multiplication by 2pi, it equals the infimum of the sum of total curvature and total absolute torsion over holonomic representatives of the link. Upper…

A vertex k-ranking is a labeling of the vertices of a graph with integers from 1 to k so any path connecting two vertices with the same label will pass through a vertex with a greater label. The rank number of a graph is defined to be the…

This is the third paper in a series devoted to enumerating the prime alternating knots and links. This paper establishes a method for enumerating the prime alternating links. It is shown that one may choose any prime alternating link…

We show that the following unlinking strategy does not always yield an optimal sequence of crossing changes: first split the link with the minimal number of crossing changes, and then unknot the resulting components.

It is known that the Kauffman-Murasugi-Thislethwaite type inequality becomes an equality for any (possibly virtual) adequate link diagram. We refine this condition. As an application we obtain a criterion for virtual link diagram with…

The Wiener index of a graph is the sum of all pairwise shortest-path distances between its vertices. In this paper we study the novel problem of finding a minimum Wiener connector: given a connected graph $G=(V,E)$ and a set $Q\subseteq V$…

The cubic lattice stick index of a knot type is the least number of sticks necessary to construct the knot type in the 3-dimensional cubic lattice. We present the cubic lattice stick index of various knots and links, including all…

Let G be a simple graph without isolated vertices. For a vertex i in G, the degree d_i is the number of vertices adjacent to i and the average 2-degree m_i is the mean of the degrees of the vertices which are adjacent to i. The sequence of…

In this paper we investigate the unlinking numbers of 10-crossing links. We make use of various link invariants and explore their behaviour when crossings are changed. The methods we describe have been used previously to compute unlinking…

For virtual knot theory, the virtual braid group was defined by generalizing the braid group. It was proved that any virtual link can be obtained by the closure of a virtual braid. On the other hand, due to work by Jones et al., it is known…

We define an invariant of welded virtual knots from each finite crossed module by considering crossed module invariants of ribbon knotted surfaces which are naturally associated with them. We elucidate that the invariants obtained are non…

The links of a physical network cannot cross, which often forces the network layout into non-optimal entangled states. Here we define a network fabric as a two-dimensional projection of a network and propose the average crossing number as a…