Related papers: Bridge Positions of Links That Cannot Be Monotonic…
We show that for every integer $b\geq 3$, there exists a link in a $b$-bridge position with respect to a critical bridge sphere. In fact, for each $b$, we construct an infinite family of links which we call square whose bridge spheres are…
A bridge position of a knot is said to be perturbed if there exists a cancelling pair of bridge disks. Motivated by the examples of knots admitting unperturbed strongly irreducible non-minimal bridge positions due to…
We give a locally minimal, but not globally minimal bridge position of a knot, that is, an unstabilized, nonminimal bridge position of a knot. It implies that a bridge position cannot always be simplified so that the bridge number…
A class A of labelled graphs is bridge-addable if for all graphs G in A and all vertices u and v in distinct connected components of G, the graph obtained by adding an edge between u and u is also in A; the class A is monotone if for all G…
We show that any non-minimal bridge decomposition of a torus knot is stabilized and that $n$-bridge decompositions of a torus knot are unique for any integer $n$. This implies that a knot in a bridge position is a torus knot if and only if…
This is the last of a series of papers which give a necessary and sufficient condition for two essential simple loops on a 2-bridge sphere in a 2-bridge link complement to be homotopic in the link complement. The first paper of the series…
We show that there exists an infinite family of knots, each of which has, for each integer k>=0, a destabilized (2k+5)-bridge sphere. We also show that, for each integer n>=4, there exists a knot with a destabilized 3-bridge sphere and a…
Suppose a knot in a $3$-manifold is in $n$-bridge position. We consider a reduction of the knot along a bridge disk $D$ and show that the result is an $(n-1)$-bridge position if and only if there is a bridge disk $E$ such that $(D, E)$ is a…
We show that if $K$ is a knot in $S^3$ and $\Sigma$ is a bridge sphere for $K$ with high distance and $2n$ punctures, the number of perturbations of $K$ required to interchange the two balls bounded by $\Sigma$ via an isotopy is $n$. We…
Suppose that every non-minimal bridge position of a knot $K$ is perturbed. We show that if $L$ is a $(2, 2q)$-cable link of $K$, then every non-minimal bridge position of $L$ is also perturbed.
We calculate the bridge distance for $m$-bridge knots/links in the $3$-sphere with sufficiently complicated $2m$-plat projections. In particular we show that if the underlying braid of the plat has $n - 1$ rows of twists and all its…
We associate at each link a connectivity space which describes its splittability properties. Then, the notion of order for finite connectivity spaces results in the definition of a new numerical invariant for links, their connectivity…
A collection of graphs is called bridge-alterable if, for each graph G with a bridge e, G is in the class if and only if G-e is. For example the class of forests is bridge-alterable. For a random forest $F_n$ sampled uniformly from the set…
This is the second of a series of papers which give a necessary and sufficient condition for two essential simple loops on a 2-bridge sphere in a 2-bridge link complement to be homotopic in the link complement. The first paper of the series…
Let the class A of graphs be bridge-addable; that is, whenever a graph G in A has vertices u and v in different components then the graph G+uv is in A. For a random graph sampled uniformly from the graphs in A on vertex set {1,..,n}, there…
The author, in her previous paper, constructed an infinite family of 3-bridge links each of which admits infinitely many 3-bridge spheres up to isotopy. In this paper, we prove that if a prime, unsplittable link $L$ in $S^3$ admits…
We show that for an $n$-component, $n$-bridge link and a positive integer $m$, the following is true: If the longitudes of $L$ lie in the $(m+2)$-th term of the lower central series of the link group then all the finite type invariants of…
We show that an $(n+1)$-bridge sphere for the unknot is a topologically minimal surface of index at most $n$.
In this paper, we characterize all links in the 3-sphere with bridge number at least three that have a bridge sphere of distance two. We show that a link L has a bridge sphere of distance at most two then it falls into at least one of three…
A closed, orientable, splitting surface in an oriented $3$-manifold is a topologically minimal surface of index $n$ if its associated disk complex is $(n-2)$-connected but not $(n-1)$-connected. A critical surface is a topologically minimal…