Related papers: Tangle decompositions of alternating link compleme…
Divide knots and links, defined by A'Campo in the singularity theory of complex curves, is a method to present knots or links by real plane curves. The present paper is a continuation of the author's previous result that every knot in the…
Recently, Bigelow defined a diagrammatic method for calculating the Alexander polynomial of a knot or link by resolving crossings in a planar algebra. I will present my multivariate version of Bigelow's calculation. The advantage to my…
We consider collections of disjoint simple closed curves in a compact orientable surface which decompose the surface into pairs of pants. The isotopy classes of such curve systems form the vertices of a 2-complex, whose edges correspond to…
Tangles were originally introduced as a concept to formalize regions of high connectivity in graphs. In recent years, they have also been discovered as a link between structural graph theory and data science: when interpreting similarity in…
The braid indices of most links remain unknown as there is no known universal method that can be used to determine the braid index of an arbitrary knot. This is also the case for alternating knots. In this paper, we show that if $K$ is an…
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…
A knot $K$ in $S^3$ is $q$-periodic if it admits a symmetry that is conjugate to a rotation of order $q$ of $S^3$. If $K$ admits a symmetry which is a homeomorphism without fixed point of period $q$ of $S^3$, then $K$ is called freely…
The aim of this survey article is to highlight several notoriously intractable problems about knots and links, as well as to provide a brief discussion of what is known about them.
New presentations of a link and a virtual link are introduced and algebraic systems on links and virtual links are constructed respectively. Based on the algebraic systems, Reduction Crossing Algorithms for them are proposed which are used…
We partially determine grid homology (combinatorial knot Floer homology) of diagonal knots, which are conjectured to be equivalent to positive braid knots, by exploiting nice grid diagrams. Its next-to-top term detects the number of prime…
The first two authors introduced vertex distortion and showed that the vertex distortion of the unknot is trivial. It was conjectured that the vertex distortion of a knot is trivial if and only if the knot is trivial. We will use…
We describe a way of encoding a Kauffman state as a set of tuples, similar to a Gauss code. Then we describe a procedure for using these state codes to determine the unoriented genus and crosscap number of any prime alternating knot or…
Generalizing previous constructions, we present a dual pair of decompositions of the complement of a link L into bipyramids, given any multi-crossing projection of L. When L is hyperbolic, this gives new upper bounds on the volume of L…
We define and study multiplicative connections in the tangent bundle of a Lie groupoid. Multiplicative connections are linear connections satisfying an appropriate compatibility with the groupoid structure. Our definition is natural in the…
It is shown that every knot or link is the set of complex tangents of a 3-sphere smoothly embedded in the three-dimensional complex space. We show in fact that a one-dimensional submanifold of a closed orientable 3-manifold can be realised…
A typical decomposition question asks whether the edges of some graph $G$ can be partitioned into disjoint copies of another graph $H$. One of the oldest and best known conjectures in this area, posed by Ringel in 1963, concerns the…
A rational knot or link can be put into a standard alternating format which has horizontal and vertical twist sites (double helices). The number and type of these twist sites are determined by terms of next-to-highest $z$-degree in…
Coloring numbers are one of the simplest combinatorial invariants of knots and links to describe. And with Joyce's introduction of quandles, we can understand them more algebraically. But can we extend these invariants to tangles -- knots…
A tangle of order $k$ in a matroid or graph may be thought of as a "$k$-connected component". For a tangle of order $k$ in a matroid or graph that satisfies a certain robustness condition, we describe a tree decomposition of the matroid or…
Rigid tree honeycombs were introduced by Knutson, Tao, and Woodward and they were shown by Dykema, Collins, Timotin, and the authors to be sums of extreme rigid honeycombs, with uniquely determined summands up to permutations. Two extreme…