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Related papers: NP-hard problems naturally arising in knot theory

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Knot Theory is currently a very broad field. Even a long survey can only cover a narrow area. Here we concentrate on the path from Goeritz matrices to quasi-alternating links. On the way, we often stray from the main road and tell related…

Geometric Topology · Mathematics 2009-09-08 Jozef H. Przytycki

The aim of this paper is to define certain algebraic structures coming from generalized Reidemeister moves of singular knot theory. We give examples, show that the set of colorings by these algebraic structures is an invariant of singular…

Geometric Topology · Mathematics 2018-06-21 Indu R. U. Churchill , M. Elhamdadi , M. Hajij , Sam Nelson

The complexity class NP of decision problems that can be solved nondeterministically in polynomial time is of great theoretical and practical importance where the notion of polynomial-time reductions between NP-problems is a key concept for…

Computational Complexity · Computer Science 2022-12-23 Hans-Jörg Kreowski , Sabine Kuske , Aaron Lye , Aljoscha Windhorst

Physical knots and links are one-dimensional submanifolds of R^3 with fixed length and thickness. We show that isotopy classes in this category can differ from those of classical knot and link theory. In particular we exhibit a Gordian…

Geometric Topology · Mathematics 2016-01-20 Alexander Coward , Joel Hass

We study the following combinatorial problem. Given a set of $n$ y-monotone curves, which we call wires, a tangle determines the order of the wires on a number of horizontal layers such that any two consecutive layers differ only in swaps…

Discrete Mathematics · Computer Science 2024-01-02 Oksana Firman , Philipp Kindermann , Boris Klemz , Alexander Ravsky , Alexander Wolff , Johannes Zink

In the previous paper, we considered a link diagram invariant of Hass and Nowik type using regular smoothing and unknotting number, to estimate the number of Reidemeister moves needed for unlinking. In this paper, we introduce a new link…

Geometric Topology · Mathematics 2011-03-29 Chuichiro Hayashi , Miwa Hayashi

This paper proves that arrangement of music is NP-hard when subject to various constraints: avoiding musical dissonance, limiting how many notes can be played simultaneously, and limiting transition speed between chords. These results imply…

Computational Complexity · Computer Science 2016-07-15 William S. Moses , Erik D. Demaine

We prove the \textbf{NP}-hardness, using Karp reductions, of some problems related to the correlation polytope and its corresponding cone, spanned by all of the $n\times n$ rank-one matrices over $\{0,1\}$. The problems are: membership,…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2026-05-06 Alberto Caprara , Fabio Furini , Claudio Gentile , Leo Liberti , Andrea Lodi

Finding a shortest path in a graph is one of the most classic problems in algorithmic and graph theory. While we dispose of quite efficient algorithms for this ordinary problem (like the Dijkstra or Bellman-Ford algorithms), some slight…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2024-08-05 Abderrahim Bendahi , Adrien Fradin

We prove that any diagram of the unknot with c crossings may be reduced to the trivial diagram using at most (236 c)^{11} Reidemeister moves. Moreover, every diagram in this sequence has at most (7 c)^2 crossings. We also prove a similar…

Geometric Topology · Mathematics 2014-12-12 Marc Lackenby

We show that approximating the trace norm contraction coefficient of a quantum channel within a constant factor is NP-hard. Equivalently, this shows that determining the optimal success probability for encoding a bit in a quantum system…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2025-09-23 Idris Delsol , Omar Fawzi , Jan Kochanowski , Akshay Ramachandran

This paper presents the following results on sets that are complete for NP. 1. If there is a problem in NP that requires exponential time at almost all lengths, then every many-one NP-complete set is complete under length-increasing…

Computational Complexity · Computer Science 2010-02-03 Xiaoyang Gu , John M. Hitchcock , A. Pavan

We classify graphs that are 0, 1, or 2 edges short of being complete partite graphs with respect to intrinsic linking and intrinsic knotting. In addition, we classify intrinsic knotting of graphs on 8 vertices. For graphs in these families,…

Geometric Topology · Mathematics 2007-05-23 Thomas W. Mattman , Ryan Ottman , Matt Rodrigues

The unknotting number is the classical invariant of a knot. However, its determination is difficult in general. To obtain the unknotting number from definition one has to investigate all possible diagrams of the knot. We tried to show the…

Geometric Topology · Mathematics 2013-06-25 Kang-Il Ri , Yun-Ho An , Chang-Il Rim

2-dimensional knots and links are studied in the article. The notion of parity is introduced via techniques similar to the ones used by the second named author in 1-dimensional case. By using parity new invariants are constructed and known…

Geometric Topology · Mathematics 2016-06-23 Denis A. Fedoseev , Vassily O. Manturov

The contraction cost of a tensor network depends on the contraction order. However, the optimal contraction ordering problem is known to be NP-hard. We show that the linear contraction ordering problem for tree tensor networks admits a…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2024-10-10 Mihail Stoian , Richard Milbradt , Christian B. Mendl

Decision-theoretic troubleshooting is one of the areas to which Bayesian networks can be applied. Given a probabilistic model of a malfunctioning man-made device, the task is to construct a repair strategy with minimal expected cost. The…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2013-08-02 Václav Lín

Graph packing and partitioning problems have been studied in many contexts, including from the algorithmic complexity perspective. Consider the packing problem of determining whether a graph contains a spanning tree and a cycle that do not…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2014-09-09 Jed Yang

We consider a natural model of random knotting- choose a knot diagram at random from the finite set of diagrams with n crossings. We tabulate diagrams with 10 and fewer crossings and classify the diagrams by knot type, allowing us to…

Geometric Topology · Mathematics 2016-10-12 Jason Cantarella , Harrison Chapman , Matt Mastin

We develop a reinforcement learning pipeline for simplifying knot diagrams. A trained agent learns move proposals and a value heuristic for navigating Reidemeister moves. The pipeline applies to arbitrary knots and links; we test it on…

Geometric Topology · Mathematics 2026-04-30 Anne Dranowski , Yura Kabkov , Daniel Tubbenhauer