Related papers: Ball packings for links
The calculation of Euclidean distance between points is generalized to one-dimensional objects such as strings or polymers. Necessary and sufficient conditions for the minimal transformation between two polymer configurations are derived.…
We define a notion of complexity for shake-slice knots which is analogous to the definition of complexity for h-cobordisms studied by Morgan-Szab\'o. We prove that for each framing $n \ne 0$ and complexity $c \ge 0$, there is an…
A knotted ribbon is one of physical aspect of a knot. A folded ribbon knot is a depiction of a knot obtained by folding a long and thin rectangular strip to become flat. The ribbonlength of a knot type can be defined as the minimum length…
It was conjectured by Ulam that the ball has the lowest optimal packing fraction out of all convex, three-dimensional solids. Here we prove that any origin-symmetric convex solid of sufficiently small asphericity can be packed at a higher…
It is known that any open necklace with beads of $t$ types in which the number of beads of each type is divisible by $k$, can be partitioned by at most $(k-1)t$ cuts into intervals that can be distributed into $k$ collections, each…
We investigate in this paper the relation between Apollonian $d$-ball packings and stacked $(d+1)$-polytopes for dimension $d\ge 3$. For $d=3$, the relation is fully described: we prove that the $1$-skeleton of a stacked $4$-polytope is the…
A contact graph of a packing of closed balls is a graph with balls as vertices and pairs of tangent balls as edges. We prove that the average degree of the contact graph of a packing of balls (with possibly different radii) in…
In this paper we compute the sharp lower bounds for the crossing number of $n$-string $k$-loop essential tangles. For essential tangles with only string components, we characterise the ones with the minimum crossing number for a given…
Motivated by its relation to the length of cutting plane proofs for the Maximum Biclique problem, we consider the following communication game on a given graph G, known to both players. Let K be the maximal number of vertices in a complete…
We prove that the Jones diameter of a link is twice its crossing number whenever the breadth of its Jones polynomial equals the difference between the crossing number and the Turaev genus. This implies that such link is adequate, as per the…
Given a configuration of pebbles on the vertices of a graph, a pebbling move is defined by removing two pebbles from some vertex and placing one pebble on an adjacent vertex. The cover pebbling number of a graph is the smallest number of…
Continuing the investigations of Harborth (1974) and the author (2002) we study the following two rather basic problems on sphere packings. Recall that the contact graph of an arbitrary finite packing of unit balls (i.e., of an arbitrary…
A directed graph $G$ is $\textit{intrinsically linked}$ if every embedding of that graph contains a non-split link $L$, where each component of $L$ is a consistently oriented cycle in $G$. A $\textit{tournament}$ is a directed graph where…
The contact number of a packing of finitely many balls in Euclidean $d$-space is the number of touching pairs of balls in the packing. A prominent subfamily of sphere packings is formed by the so-called totally separable sphere packings:…
This article is a gentle introduction to the mathematical area known as circle packing, the study of the kinds of patterns that can be formed by configurations of non-overlapping circles. The first half of the article is an exposition of…
The ribbon number $r(K)$ of a ribbon knot $K \subset S^3$ is the minimal number of ribbon intersections contained in any ribbon disk bounded by $K$. We find new lower bounds for $r(K)$ using $\det(K)$ and $\Delta_K(t)$, and we prove that…
We give a new and elementary proof that the number of elastic collisions of a finite number of balls in the Euclidean space is finite. We show that if there are $n$ balls of equal masses and radii 1, and at the time of a collision between…
Theoretical background is provided towards the mathematical foundation of the minimum enclosing ball problem. This problem concerns the determination of the unique spherical surface of smallest radius enclosing a given bounded set in the…
A link is called $\chi-$slice if it bounds a smooth properly embedded surface in the 4-ball with no closed components and Euler characteristic 1. If a link has a single component, then it is $\chi-$slice if and only if it is slice. One…
Knots have been considered to be useful models for simulating molecular chains such as DNA and proteins. One quantity that we are interested on molecular knots is the minimum number of monomers necessary to realize a knot. In this paper we…