Related papers: The virtual flyping theorem

In 1898, Tait asserted several properties of alternating knot diagrams. These assertions became known as Tait's conjectures and remained open until the discovery of the Jones polynomial in 1985. The new polynomial invariants soon led to…

Tait's flyping conjecture, stating that two reduced, alternating, prime link diagrams can be connected by a finite sequence of flypes, is extended to reduced, alternating, prime diagrams of 4-regular graphs in S^3. The proof of this version…

We prove a Kauffman-Murasugi-Thistlethwaite theorem for alternating links in thickened surfaces. It states that any reduced alternating diagram of a link in a thickened surface has minimal crossing number, and any two reduced alternating…

We extend the Gordon-Litherland pairing to links in thickened surfaces, and use it to define signature, determinant, and nullity invariants for links that bound (unoriented) spanning surfaces. The invariants are seen to depend only on the…

Dasbach and Lin proved a "volumish theorem" for alternating links. We prove the analogue for alternating link diagrams on surfaces, which provides bounds on the hyperbolic volume of a link in a thickened surface in terms of coefficients of…

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…

We extend some classical results of Bankwitz, Crowell, and Murasugi to the setting of virtual links. For instance, we show that an alternating virtual link is split if and only if it is visibly split, and that the Alexander polynomial of…

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…

Let $D$ be a cellular alternating link diagram on a closed orientable surface $\Sigma$. We prove that if $D$ has no removable nugatory crossings then each checkerboard surface from $D$ is $\pi_1$-essential and contains no essential closed…

The Tait-Kneser theorem, first demonstrated by Peter G. Tait in 1896, states that the osculating circles along a plane curve with monotone non-vanishing curvature are pairwise disjoint and nested. This note contains a proof of this theorem…

The celebrated Thistlethwaite theorem relates the Jones polynomial of a link with the Tutte polynomial of the corresponding planar graph. We give a generalization of this theorem to virtual links. In this case, the graph will be embedded…

We establish a characterization of alternating links in terms of definite spanning surfaces. We apply it to obtain a new proof of Tait's conjecture that reduced alternating diagrams of the same link have the same crossing number and writhe.…

We introduce stable equivalence classes of oriented links in orientable three-manifolds that are orientation $I$-bundles over closed but not necessarily orientable surfaces. We call these twisted links, and show that they subsume the…

Gordon and Litherland's paper $\textit{On the Signature of a link}$ introduced a bilinear form that simultaneously unifies both the quadratic forms of Trotter and Goeritz. This remarkable pairing of combinatorics and topology has had…

Link equivalence up to isotopy in a 3-space is the problem that lies at the root of knot theory, and is important in 3-dimensional topology and geometry. We consider its restriction to alternating links, given by two alternating diagrams…

The Tait conjecture states that alternating reduced diagrams of links in S^3 have the minimal number of crossings. It has been proved in 1987 by M. Thistlethwaite, L. Kauffman and K. Murasugi studying the Jones polynomial. The author proved…

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 present a conjecture for the power-law exponent in the asymptotic number of types of plane curves as the number of self-intersections goes to infinity. In view of the description of prime alternating links as flype equivalence classes of…

Twisted links are a generalization of virtual links. As virtual links correspond to abstract links on orientable surfaces, twisted links correspond to abstract links on (possibly non-orientable) surfaces. In this paper, we introduce the…

Given a class of objects, a pattern theorem is a powerful result describing their structure. We show that alternating knots exhibit a pattern theorem, and use this result to prove a long-standing conjecture that alternating knots grow rare.…