Related papers: On Fox's trapezoidal conjecture

In 1971, Kunio Murasugi proved a necessary condition on a knot's Alexander polynomial for that knot to be periodic of prime power order. In this paper I present an alternate proof of Murasugi's condition which is subsequently used to extend…

We give examples of knots with some unusual properties of the crossing number of positive diagrams or strand number of positive braid representations. In particular we show that positive braid knots may not have positive minimal (strand…

We establish a relationship between the Jones polynomial of generalized weaving knots of type $W(3,n,m)$ and the Chebyshev polynomial of the first kind. Consequently, we prove that the coefficients of the Jones polynomial of weaving knots…

The central question of knot theory is that of distinguishing links up to isotopy. The first polynomial invariant of links devised to help answer this question was the Alexander polynomial (1928). Almost a century after its introduction, it…

We establish a Kauffman-Murasugi-Thistlethwaite-type theorem for alternating knots in a solid torus. Specifically, we show that any dotted-reduced alternating diagram of a knot in a handlebody realizes the minimal crossing number, and that…

We show that 3-braid links with given (non-zero) Alexander or Jones polynomial are finitely many, and can be effectively determined. We classify among closed 3-braids strongly quasipositive and fibered ones, and show that 3-braid links have…

In this paper, we introduce a notion of clock moves for spanning trees in plane graphs. This enables us to develop a spanning tree model of an Alexander polynomial for a plane graph and prove the unimodal property of its associate…

We give necessary conditions for a polynomial to be the Conway polynomial of a two-bridge link. As a consequence, we obtain simple proofs of the classical theorems of Murasugi and Hartley. We give a modulo 2 congruence for links, which…

We determine the cobordism distance between all positive 3-braid links and connected sums of trefoil knots, up to a constant error. This may be seen as a reinterpretation of Coxeter's finiteness result on the braid group on three strands…

In this paper we present a sequence of link invariants, defined from twisted Alexander polynomials, and discuss their effectiveness in distinguish knots. In particular, we recast and extend by geometric means a recent result of Silver and…

We show that after stabilizations of opposite parity and braid isotopy, any two braids in the same topological link type cobound embedded annuli. We use this to prove the generalized Jones conjecture relating the braid index and algebraic…

The aim of this paper is to study the behavior of knot Floer homology under Murasugi sum. We establish a graded version of Ni's isomorphism between the extremal knot Floer homology of Murasugi sum of two links and the tensor product of the…

We prove that the knots and links that admit a 3-highly twisted irreducible diagram with more than two twist regions are hyperbolic. This should be compared with a result of Futer-Purcell for 6-highly twisted diagrams. While their proof…

Homology of the circle with non-trivial local coefficients is trivial. From this well-known fact we deduce geometric corollaries concerning links of codimension two. In particular, the Murasugi-Tristram signatures are extended to invariants…

The Vol-Det Conjecture, formulated by Champanerkar, Kofman and Purcell, states that there exists a specific inequality connecting the hyperbolic volume of an alternating link and its determinant. Among the classes of links for which this…

Weakly generalised alternating knots are knots with an alternating projection onto a closed surface in a compact irreducible 3-manifold, and they share many hyperbolic geometric properties with usual alternating knots. For example, usual…

We prove that if an alternating knot has unknotting number one, then there exists an unknotting crossing in any alternating diagram. This is done by showing that the obstruction to unknotting number one developed by Greene in his work on…

Many well studied knots can be realized as positive braid knots where the braid word contains a positive full twist; we say that such knots are twist positive. Some important families of knots are twist positive, including torus knots,…

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…

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…