Related papers: How Many Links Fit in a Box?
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,…
Given a thin strip of paper, tie a knot, connect the ends, and flatten into the plane. This is a physical model of a folded ribbon knot in the plane, first introduced by Louis Kauffman. We study the folded ribbonlength of these folded…
We give a refined upper bound for the hyperbolic volume of an alternating link in terms of the first three and the last three coefficients of its colored Jones polynomial.
Knots naturally appear in continuous dynamical systems as flow periodic trajectories. However, discrete dynamical systems are also closely connected with the theory of knots and links. For example, for Pixton diffeomorphisms, the…
It has been conjectured that the algebraic crossing number of a link is uniquely determined in minimal braid representation. This conjecture is true for many classes of knots and links. The Morton-Franks-Williams inequality gives a lower…
Given a link map f into a manifold of the form Q = N \times \Bbb R, when can it be deformed to an unlinked position (in some sense, e.g. where its components map to disjoint \Bbb R-levels) ? Using the language of normal bordism theory as…
The splitting number of a link is the minimum number of crossing changes between distinct components that is required to convert the link into a split link. We provide a bound on the splitting number in terms of the four-genus of related…
Every finite collection of oriented closed geodesics in the modular surface has a canonically associated link in its unit tangent bundle coming from the periodic orbits of the geodesic flow. We study the volume of the associated link…
Shake slice generalizes the notion of a slice link, naturally extending the notion of shake slice knots to links. There is also a relative version, shake concordance, that generalizes link concordance. We show that if two links are shake…
The n-th hull of a union of curves in R^3 is the set of points with the property: Any plane passing through the point intersects the curves at least 2n times. The hull number u(L) of a link L is defined as the minimum number of non-empty…
In the 1980's Daryl Cooper introduced the notion of a C-complex (or clasp-complex) bounded by a link and explained how to compute signatures and polynomial invariants using a C-complex. Since then this was extended by works of Cimasoni,…
For a given multigraph H, a graph G is H-linked, if |G| \geq |H| and for every injective map {\tau}: V (H) \rightarrow V (G), we can find internally disjoint paths in G, such that every edge from uv in H corresponds to a {\tau} (u) - {\tau}…
We prove the meridional rank conjecture for arborescent links associated to plane trees with the following property: all branching points carry a straight branch to at least three leaves. The proof involves an upper bound on the bridge…
It is well known that any link can be represented by the closure of a braid. The minimum number of strings needed in a braid whose closure represents a given link is called the braid index of the link and the well known…
It was shown by Jim Davis that a 2-component link with Alexander polynomial one is topologically concordant to the Hopf link. In this paper, we show that there is a 2-component link with Alexander polynomial one that has unknotted…
The linking number of an oriented two-component link is an invariant indicating how intertwined the two components are. Tuler proved that the linking number of a two-component rational $\frac{p}{q}$-link is $$\sum^{\frac{|p|}{2}}_{k=1}…
One can embed arbitrarily many disjoint, non-parallel, non-boundary parallel, incompressible surfaces in any three manifold with at least one boundary component of genus two or greater [4]. This paper proves the contrasting, but not…
The homotopy trivializing number, \(n_h(L)\), and the Delta homotopy trivializing number, \(n_\Delta(L)\), are invariants of the link homotopy class of \(L\) which count how many crossing changes or Delta moves are needed to reduce that…
The lattice stick number $s_L(L)$ of a link $L$ is defined to be the minimal number of straight line segments required to construct a stick presentation of $L$ in the cubic lattice. Hong, No and Oh found a general upper bound $s_L(K) \leq 3…
We give new Casson-Gordon style obstructions for a two-component link to be topologically concordant to the Hopf link.