Related papers: Getting a handle on the Conway knot
We study the equivariant concordance classes of two-bridge knots, providing an easy formula to compute their butterfly polynomial, and we give two different proofs that no two-bridge knot is equivariantly slice. Finally, we introduce a new…
An inscribed knot is formed by polygonally connecting points lying on a knot $\gamma$ in parametric order, then closing the path by connecting the first and final points. The stick-knot number of a knot type K is the minimum number of line…
A quadruple crossing is a crossing in a projection of a knot or link that has four strands of the knot passing straight through it. A quadruple crossing projection is a projection such that all of the crossings are quadruple crossings. In a…
If a knot K bounds a genus one Seifert surface F in the 3-sphere and F contains an essential simple closed curve alpha that has induced framing 0 and is smoothly slice, then K is smoothly slice. Conjecturally, the converse holds. It is…
As a corollary of work of Ozsvath and Szabo [math.GT/0301149], it is shown that the classical concordance group of algebraically slice knots has an infinite cyclic summand and in particular is not a divisible group.
The unknotting number of a knot is bounded from below by its slice genus. It is a well-known fact that the genera and unknotting numbers of torus knots coincide. In this note we characterize quasipositive knots for which the genus bound is…
We give a closed formula for the Conway function of a splice in terms of the Conway function of its splice components. As corollaries, we refine and generalize results of Seifert, Torres, and Sumners-Woods.
We give a necessary, and in some cases sufficient, condition for sliceness inside the family of pretzel knots $P (p_1,...,p_n)$ with one $p_i$ even. The three stranded case yields two interesting families of examples: the first consists of…
For any given number of crossings $c$, there exists a formula to determine the number of 2-bridge knots of $c$ crossings, and indeed it is a simple matter to actually construct presentations of these knots. However, the determination of…
Extending upon our previous work, we verify the Jones Unknot Conjecture for all knots up to $24$ crossings. We describe the method of our approach and analyze the growth of the computational complexity of its different components.
For each $g>0$ we give infinitely many knots that are strongly negative amphichiral, hence rationally slice and representing 2-torsion in the smooth concordance group, yet which do not bound any locally flatly embedded surface in the 4-ball…
One approach to produce a pair of homeomorphic-but-not-diffeomophic closed 4-manifolds is to find a knot which is smoothly slice in one but not the other. This approach has never been run successfully. We give the first examples of a pair…
We study the classification of slice disks of knots up to isotopy and diffeomorphism using an invariant in knot Floer homology. We compute the invariant of a slice disk obtained by deform-spinning, and show that it can be effectively used…
The stick number of a knot is the minimum number of segments needed to build a polygonal version of the knot. Despite its elementary definition and relevance to physical knots, the stick number is poorly understood: for most knots we only…
The untwisting number of a knot K is the minimum number of null-homologous twists required to convert K to the unknot. Such a twist can be viewed as a generalization of a crossing change, since a classical crossing change can be effected by…
We consider the question of when a slice knot admits a reducible Dehn surgery. By analyzing the correction terms associated to such a surgery, we show that slice knots cannot admit surgeries with more than two summands. We also give a…
Frequently, knots are enumerated by their crossing number. However, the number of knots with crossing number $c$ grows exponentially with $c$, and to date computer-assisted proofs can only classify diagrams up to around twenty crossings.…
We define the concordance crosscap number of a knot as the minimum crosscap number among all the knots concordant to the knot. The four-dimensional crosscap number is the minimum first Betti number of non-orientable surfaces smoothly…
For a knot $K$ in the 3-sphere and a simply connected closed 4-manifold $X$, we define the $X$-double slice genus of $K$, extending the notion from the case when $X$ is the 4-sphere. We show that for each integer $n$, there exists an…
A quadrisecant of a knot is a straight line intersecting the knot at four points. If a knot has finitely many quadrisecants, one can replace each subarc between two adjacent secant points by the line segment between them to get the…