Related papers: Colored Unlinking
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…
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.
The splitting number of a link is the minimal number of crossing changes between different components required, on any diagram, to convert it to a split link. We introduce new techniques to compute the splitting number, involving covering…
The minimal coloring number of a $\mathbb{Z}$-colorable link is the minimal number of colors for non-trivial $\mathbb{Z}$-colorings on diagrams of the link. In this paper, we show that the minimal coloring number of any non-splittable…
The splitting number of a link is the minimum number of crossing changes between distinct components that is required to convert the link into a split link. We provide a bound on the splitting number in terms of the four-genus of related…
For a link with zero determinants, a Z-coloring is defined as a generalization of Fox coloring. We call a link having a diagram which admits a non-trivial Z-coloring a Z-colorable link. The minimal coloring number of a Z-colorable link is…
We show that the minimal number of colors for all effective $n$-colorings of a link with non-zero determinant is at least $1+\log_2 n$.
A link diagram is said to be lune-free if, when viewed as a 4-regular plane graph it does not have multiple edges between any pair of nodes. We prove that any colored link diagram is equivalent to a colored lune-free diagram with the same…
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…
Using unknotting number, we introduce a link diagram invariant of Hass and Nowik type, which changes at most by 2 under a Reidemeister move. As an application, we show that a certain infinite sequence of diagrams of the trivial…
The splitting number of a link is the minimal number of crossing changes between different components required to convert it into a split link. We obtain a lower bound on the splitting number in terms of the (multivariable) signature and…
K. Ichihara and E. Matsudo introduced the notions of $\mathbb{Z}$-colorable links and the minimal coloring number for $\mathbb{Z}$-colorable links, which is one of invariants for links. They proved that the lower bound of minimal coloring…
We consider the number of colors for the colorings of links by the symmetric group $S_3$ of degree $3$. For knots, such a coloring corresponds to a Fox 3-coloring, and thus the number of colors must be 1 or 3. However, for links, there are…
We describe a method for generating minimal hard prime surface-link diagrams. We extend the known examples of minimal hard prime classical unknot and unlink diagrams up to three components and generate figures of all minimal hard prime…
It was shown that any $\mathbb{Z}$-colorable link has a diagram which admits a non-trivial $\mathbb{Z}$-coloring with at most four colors. In this paper, we consider minimal numbers of colors for non-trivial $\mathbb{Z}$-colorings on…
In this paper we study further when tangles embed into the unknot, the unlink or a split link. In particular, we study obstructions to these properties through geometric characterizations, tangle sums and colorings. As an application we…
Twisted links are a generalization of classical links and correspond to stably equivalence classes of links in thickened surfaces. In this paper we introduce twisted intersection colorings of a diagram and construct two invariants of a…
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…
A well-known algorithm for unknotting knots involves traversing a knot diagram and changing each crossing that is first encountered from below. The minimal number of crossings changed in this way across all diagrams for a knot is called the…
We categorise coherent band (aka nullification) pathways between knots and 2-component links. Additionally, we characterise the minimal coherent band pathways (with intermediates) between any two knots or 2-component links with small…