Related papers: Vertex distortion detects the unknot

We generalize the idea of unknotting knots to Seifert surfaces. We define an operation called ribbon twist which serves as the equivalent of a crossing change for knots. A Seifert surface is considered untwisted, the equivalent to…

It is proved that every disconnected surface-link with meridian-based free fundamental group is a trivial (i.e., an unknotted-unlinked) surface-link. This result is a surface-link version of the author's recent announcement result on smooth…

The A-polynomial of a knot is defined in terms of SL(2,C) representations of the knot group, and encodes information about essential surfaces in the knot complement. In 2005, Dunfield-Garoufalidis and Boyer-Zhang proved that it detects the…

The graph reconstruction conjecture asserts that every simple graph on at least three vertices is uniquely determined by its deck of vertex-deleted subgraphs. In this expository article we survey the conjecture and present an…

In this article it is proven that if a knot, K, bounds an imbedded grope of class n, then the knot is n/2-trivial in the sense of Gusarov and Stanford. That is, all type n/2 invariants vanish on K. We also give a simple way to construct all…

In this article we discuss applications of neural networks to recognising knots and, in particular, to the unknotting problem. One of motivations for this study is to understand how neural networks work on the example of a problem for which…

K-theoretic Donaldson-Thomas counts of curves in toric and many related threefolds can be computed in terms of a certain canonical 3-valent tensor, the K-theoretic equivariant vertex. In this paper we derive a formula for the vertex in the…

Virtual knot theory is a generalization of knot theory which is based on Gauss chord diagrams and link diagrams on closed oriented surfaces. A twisted knot is a generalization of a virtual knot, which corresponds to a link diagram on a…

It follows from earlier work of Silver-Williams and the authors that twisted Alexander polynomials detect the unknot and the Hopf link. We now show that twisted Alexander polynomials also detect the trefoil and the figure-8 knot, that…

We prove that deciding if a diagram of the unknot can be untangled using at most $k$ Riedemeister moves (where $k$ is part of the input) is NP-hard. We also prove that several natural questions regarding links in the $3$-sphere are NP-hard,…

Knotoid theory is a generalization of knot theory introduced by Turaev in 2012. In recent years, various invariants of knotoids have been studied. In this paper, we mainly discuss unknotting moves and unknotting numbers of plus-welded…

The unknotting number of a knot is the minimum number of crossings one must change to turn that knot into the unknot. The algebraic unknotting number is the minimum number of crossing changes needed to transform a knot into an Alexander…

We introduce two numerical invariants, the waist and the trunk of knots. The waist of a closed incompressible surface in the complement of a knot is defined as the minimal intersection number of all compressing disks for the surface in the…

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.

Kontsevich constructed a map from suitable cocycles in the graph complex to infinitesimal deformations of Poisson bi-vector fields. Under the deformations, the bi-vector fields remain Poisson. We ask, are these deformations trivial,…

In the classical knot theory there is a well-known notion of descending diagram. From an arbitrary diagram one can easily obtain, by some crossing changes, a descending diagram which is a diagram of the unknot or unlink. In this paper the…

This paper makes two main contributions: The first is the construction of a near-minimum spanning tree with constant average distortion. The second is a general equivalence theorem relating two refined notions of distortion: scaling…

Inspired by the duality between gravity and defects in crystals, we study lattice field theory with torsion. The torsion is realized by a line defect of a lattice, namely a dislocation. As the first application, we perform the numerical…

A non-trivial element of a group is a generalized torsion element if some products of its conjugates is the identity. The minimum number of such conjugates is called a generalized torsion order. We provide several restrictions for…

Simple closed curves in the plane can be mapped to nontrivial knots under the action of origami foldings that allow the paper to self-intersect. We show all tame knot types may be produced in this manner, motivating the development of a new…