Related papers: Complexity of equal 0-surgeries
In this note, I describe a formalism for treating knots as geometric spaces, and make an application to a simple statistical mechanics computation. The motivation for this study is the natural visual symmetry of the knot, and I describe how…
This note has an experimental nature and contains no new theorems. We introduce certain moves for classical knot diagrams that for all the very many examples we have tested them on give a monotonic complete simplification. A complete…
In this paper, we compute the slice genus for many low-crossing virtual knots. For instance, we show that 1295 out of 92800 virtual knots with 6 or fewer crossings are slice, and that all but 248 of the rest are not slice. Key to these…
In this paper we present a systematic method to generate prime knot and prime link minimal triple-point projections, and then classify all classical prime knots and prime links with triple-crossing number at most four. We also extend the…
Let $c(K)$ denote the crossing number of a knot $K$ and let $K_1\# K_2$ denote the connected sum of two oriented knots $K_1$ and $K_2$. It is a very old unsolved question that whether $c(K_1\# K_2)=c(K_1)+c(K_2)$. In this paper we show that…
This manuscript introduces a new framework for the study of knots by exploring the neighborhood of knot embeddings in the space of simple open and closed curves in 3-space. The latter gives rise to a knotoid spectrum, which determines the…
Kakimizu complexes have been found for several classes of links. O.Kakimizu found the Kakimizu complexes of knots with crossing number less than or equal to 10. Hatcher and Thurston found the 0-skeleton of the Kakimizu complex of 2-bridge…
Let $K$ be a knot with an unknotting tunnel $\gamma$ and suppose that $K$ is not a 2-bridge knot. There is an invariant $\rho = p/q \in \mathbb{Q}/2 \mathbb{Z}$, $p$ odd, defined for the pair $(K, \gamma)$. The invariant $\rho$ has…
Relative self-linking and linking "numbers" for pairs of knots in oriented 3-manifolds are defined in terms of intersection invariants of immersed surfaces in 4-manifolds. The resulting concordance invariants generalize the usual…
A Lissajous knot is one that can be parameterized by a single cosine function in each coordinate. Lissajous knots are highly symmetric, and for this reason, not all knots are Lissajous. We prove several theorems which allow us to place…
We introduce the concept of `claspers,' which are surfaces in 3-manifolds with some additional structure on which surgery operations can be performed. Using claspers we define for each positive integer k an equivalence relation on links…
For prime knots $K_1$ and $K_2$, we write $K_1 \geq K_2$ if there is an epimorphism from the knot group of $K_1$ to that of $K_2$ which preserves the meridian. We construct a family of pairs of knots with $K_1 \geq K_2$ such that an…
Kreck's modified surgery theory reduces the classification of closed, connected 4-manifolds, up to connect sum with some number of copies of $S^2\times S^2$, to a series of bordism questions. We implement this in the case of unorientable…
We show that for genus one knots the Alexander polynomial and the homology of the double cover branching over the knot provide obstructions to cosmetic crossings. As an application we prove the nugatory crossing conjecture for the…
A classical knot is described by a one-stroke trajectory with entanglements of a string. The replica method appears as a powerful tool in statistical mechanics for a polymer or self-avoiding walk. We consider this replica N to 0 limit in…
Let N be a closed oriented k-dimensional submanifold of the (k+2)-dimensional sphere; denote its complement by C(N). Denote by x the 1-dimensional cohomology class in C(N), dual to N. The Morse-Novikov number of C(N) is by definition the…
Berge introduced knots that are primitive/primitive with respect to the genus 2 Heegaard surface, $F$, in $S^3$; surgery on such knots at the surface slope yields a lens space. Later Dean described a similar class of knots that are…
We present the complete classification of the subgroup of the classical knot concordance group generated by knots with eight or fewer crossings. Proofs are presented in summary. We also describe extensions of this work to the case of nine…
Suppose that there exists an epimorphism from the knot group of a $2$-bridge knot $K$ onto that of another knot $K'$. In this paper, we study the relationship between their crossing numbers $c(K)$ and $c(K')$. Especially it is shown that…
We derive new existence results for tight contact structures on certain 3-manifolds which can be presented as surgery along specific knots in S^3. Indeed, we extend our earlier results on knots with maximal Thurston-Bennequin number being…