Related papers: A meridian lemma for fully alternating links in th…
Menasco showed that a non-split, prime, alternating link that is not a 2-braid is hyperbolic in $S^3$. We prove a similar result for links in closed thickened surfaces $S \times I$. We define a link to be fully alternating if it has an…
We consider links that are alternating on surfaces embedded in a compact 3-manifold. We show that under mild restrictions, the complement of the link decomposes into simpler pieces, generalising the polyhedral decomposition of alternating…
We use an extension of Gordon-Litherland pairing to thickened surfaces to give a topological characterization of alternating links in thickened surfaces. If $\Sigma$ is a closed oriented surface and $F$ is a compact unoriented surface in…
Checkerboard surfaces in alternating link complements are used frequently to determine information about the link. However, when many crossings are added to a single twist region of a link diagram, the geometry of the link complement…
Since the 1980s, it has been known that essential surfaces in alternating link complements can be isotoped to be transverse to the link diagram almost everywhere, with the exception of some well-understood intersections, and described…
It has been known for several decades that classical alternating links in the 3-sphere have nice hyperbolic geometric properties. Recent work generalises such results to give hyperbolic geometry of links with alternating projections onto…
We show that any smooth one-dimensional link in the real projective three-plane is the fixed-point locus of a smooth symplectic surface in the complex projective three-plane which is invariant under complex conjugation. The degree of the…
Menasco proved that nontrivial links in the 3-sphere with connected prime alternating non-2-braid projections are hyperbolic. This was further extended to augmented alternating links wherein non-isotopic trivial components bounding disks…
In this paper, we show that two flat fully augmented links with homeomorphic complements must be equivalent as links in $\mathbb{S}^{3}$. This requires a careful analysis of how totally geodesic surfaces and cusps intersect in these link…
We prove that in the complement of a highly twisted link, all closed, essential, meridionally incompressible surfaces must have high genus. The genus bound is proportional to the number of crossings per twist region. A similar result holds…
We prove that if $L$ is a non-trivial alternating link embedded (without crossings) in a closed surface $F\subset S^3$, then $F$ has a compressing disk whose boundary intersects $L$ in no more than two points. Moreover, whenever the surface…
A cobordism between links in thickened surfaces consists of a surface $ S $ and a $3$-manifold $M $, with $ S $ properly embedded in $ M \times I $. We show that there exist links in thickened surfaces such that if $(S,M) $ is a cobordism…
Traditionally, alternating links are studied with alternating diagrams on $S^2$ in $S^3$. In this paper, we consider links which are alternating on higher genus surfaces $S_g$ in $S_g \times I$. We define what it means for such a link to be…
We study the existence of branched coverings between closed $3$-manifolds, with emphasis on universal knots and links. We prove that the only closed $3$-manifolds that admit a universal link are spherical. Furthermore, we distinguish…
In this paper, we study alternating links in thickened surfaces in terms of the lattices of integer flows on their Tait graphs. We use this approach to give a short proof of the first two generalised Tait conjectures. We also prove that the…
Suppose a genus two handlebody is removed from a 3-manifold M and then a single meridian of the handlebody is restored. The result is a knot or link complement in M and it is natural to ask whether geometric properties of the link…
A classification of spanning surfaces for alternating links is provided up to genus, orientability, and a new invariant that we call aggregate slope. That is, given an alternating link, we determine all possible combinations of genus,…
It is natural to ask how many isotopy classes of embedded essential surfaces lie in a given 3-manifold. The first bounds on the number of such surfaces were exponential, using normal surfaces. More recently, by restricting to alternating…
Gordon and Litherland showed that all compact, unoriented, possibly non-orientable surfaces in $S^3$ bounded by a link are realted by attaching/deleting tubes and half twisted bands. In this note we give an elementary proof for this result.
In this paper, we show that a link which has a positive and almost alternating diagram is alternating, besides that a positive and non-alternating Montesinos link has an almost positive-alternating diagram.