Related papers: Alternating knots with large boundary slope diamet…
The ropelength of a knot is the minimum contour length of a tube of unit radius that traces out the knot in three dimensional space without self-overlap, colloquially the minimum amount of rope needed to tie a given knot. Theoretical upper…
We consider the question, asked by Friedl, Livingston and Zentner, of which sums of torus knots are concordant to alternating knots. After a brief analysis of the problem in its full generality, we focus on sums of two torus knots. We…
The warping degree of an oriented knot diagram is the minimal number of crossings which we meet as an under-crossing first when we travel along the diagram from a fixed point. The warping degree of a knot projection is the minimal value of…
Kearton observed that mutation can change the concordance class of a knot. A close examination of his example reveals that it is of 4-genus 1 and has a mutant of 4-genus 0. The first goal of this paper is to construct examples to show that…
A knot is a closed loop in space without self-intersection. Two knots are equivalent if there is a self homeomorphism of space bringing one onto the other. An arc presentation is an embedding of a knot in the union of finitely many half…
We prove that if an alternating 3-braid knot has unknotting number one, then there must exist an unknotting crossing in any alternating diagram of it, and we enumerate such knots. The argument combines the obstruction to unknotting number…
We introduce a new numerical invariant for special, reduced, alternating diagrams of oriented knots and links, defined in terms of the Laplacian matrix of the associated Tait graph. For a special alternating diagram, the Laplacian encodes…
Birman-Menasco proved that there are finitely many knots having a given genus and braid index. We give a quantitative version of Birman-Menasco finiteness theorem, an estimate of the crossing number of knots in terms of genus and braid…
We prove a version of symmetric criticality for ropelength-critical knots. Our theorem implies that a knot or link with a symmetric representative has a ropelength-critical configuration with the same symmetry. We use this to construct new…
We show that for genus one knots the Alexander polynomial and the homology of the double cover branching over the knot provide obstructions to cosmetic crossings. As an application we prove the nugatory crossing conjecture for the…
We show that if the branched double cover of an alternating link arises as $p/q \in \mathbb{Q} \setminus \mathbb{Z}$ surgery on a knot in $S^3$, then this is exhibited by a rational tangle replacement in an alternating diagram.
The paper investigates biorderability of knot quandles of prime knots up to eight crossings. We prove that knot quandles of knots $6_3$, $8_7$, $8_8$, $8_{10}$ and $8_{16}$ can not be biorderable. However, we see that knot quandles of knots…
Beyond planarity concepts (prominent examples include k-planarity or fan-planarity) apply certain restrictions on the allowed patterns of crossings in drawings. It is natural to ask, how much the number of crossings may increase over the…
Let $L$ be a prime alternating link with $n$ crossings. We show that for each fixed $g$, the number of genus $g$ incompressible surfaces in the complement of $L$ is bounded by a polynomial in $n$. Previous bounds were exponential in $n$.
The Slope Conjecture relates the degree of the colored Jones polynomial of a knot to boundary slopes of incompressible surfaces. Our aim is to prove the Slope Conjecture for Montesinos knots, and to match parameters of a state-formula for…
A link is almost alternating if it is non-alternating and has a diagram that can be transformed into an alternating diagram via one crossing change. We give formulas for the first two and last two potential coefficients of the Jones…
We study relationships between the colored Jones polynomial and the A-polynomial of a knot. We establish for a large class of 2-bridge knots the AJ conjecture (of Garoufalidis) that relates the colored Jones polynomial and the A-polynomial.…
We will develop various methods, some are of geometric nature and some are of algebraic nature, to detect the various achiralities of knots and links in $S^3$. For example, we show that the twisted Whitehead double of a knot is achiral if…
We exhibit pairs of transverse knots with the same self-linking number that are not transversely isotopic, using the recently defined knot Floer homology invariant for transverse knots and some algebraic refinements of it.
It is a very old conjecture that the crossing number of knots is additive under connected sum. In other words, if K#K' is the connected sum of knots K and K', then does the equality c(K#K') = c(K) + c(K') hold? We prove that c(K#K') is at…