Related papers: An extended symmetric union and its Alexander poly…
Motivated by the study of ribbon knots we explore symmetric unions, a beautiful construction introduced by Kinoshita and Terasaka 50 years ago. It is easy to see that every symmetric union represents a ribbon knot, but the converse is still…
We revisit the issue of the existence of infinitely many distinct prime knots with the same Alexander invariant. We present infinitely many distinct families, each family made up of infinitely many distinct knots. Within each family, the…
We use the 2-loop term of the Kontsevich integral to show that there are (many) knots with trivial Alexander polynomial which don't have a Seifert surface whose genus equals the rank of the Seifert form. This is one of the first…
In the literature of the study of knot group epimorphisms, the existence of an epimorphism between two given knot groups is mostly (if not always) shown by giving an epimorphism which preserves meridians. A natural question arises: is there…
For all n > 0 there is a homomorphism from the smooth concordance group of knots in dimension 2n + 1 to an algebraically defined group called the rational algebraic concordance group. This algebraic concordance group splits as a direct sum…
Given any knot k, there exists a hyperbolic knot tilde k with arbitrarily large volume such that the knot group pi k is a quotient of pi tilde k by a map that sends meridian to meridian and longitude to longitude. The knot tilde k can be…
Building further on work of Marin and Wagner, we give a cubic braid-type skein theory of the Links--Gould polynomial invariant of oriented links and prove that it can be used to evaluate any oriented link, adding this polynomial to the list…
We give characterizations of the skein polynomial for links (as well as Jones and Alexander-Conway polynomials derivable from it), avoiding the usual "smoothing of a crossing" move. As by-products we have characterizations of these…
In this paper we prove that the Casson-Gordon invariants of the connected sum of two knots split when the Alexander polynomials of the knots are coprime. As one application, for any knot K, all but finitely many algebraically slice twisted…
We enumerate and show tables of minimal diagrams for all prime knots up to the triple-crossing number equal to five. We derive a minimal generating set of oriented moves connecting triple-crossing diagrams of the same oriented knot. We also…
This survey explores knot polynomials and their categorification, culminating in the homological invariants of knots. We begin with an overview of classical knot polynomials, progressing towards the superpolynomial and its role in unifying…
We define the symmetric braid index $b_s(K)$ of a ribbon knot $K$ to be the smallest index of a braid whose closure yields a symmetric union diagram of $K$, and derive a Khovanov-homological characterisation of knots with $b_s(K)$ at most…
We show that if the connected sum of two knots with coprime Alexander polynomials has vanishing von Neumann rho-invariants associated with certain metabelian representations then so do both knots. As an application, we give a new example of…
It is still unknown whether there is a nontrivial knot with Jones polynomial equal to that of the unknot. Tanaka shows that if an amphichiral knot is a symmetric union of the unknot with one twist region, then its Jones polynomial is…
We show that every periodic virtual knot can be realized as the closure of a periodic virtual braid and use this to study the Alexander invariants of periodic virtual knots. If $K$ is a $q$-periodic and almost classical knot, we show that…
This paper defines a new invariant of virtual knots and links that we call the extended bracket polynomial, and denote by <<K>> for a virtual knot or link K. This invariant is a state summation over bracket states of the oriented diagram…
We study the twisted Alexander polynomial $\Delta_{K,\rho}$ of a knot $K$ associated to a non-abelian representation $\rho$ of the knot group into $SL_2(\BC)$. It is known for every knot $K$ that if $K$ is fibered, then for every…
Suppose the knot group G(K) of a knot K has a non-abelian representation \rho on A_4 \subset GL(4,Z). We conjecture that the twisted Alexander polynomial of K associated to \rho is of the form: \Delta_K(t)/(1-t) \phi(t^3), where \Delta_K…
We call a knot $K$ a complete Alexander neighbor if every possible Alexander polynomial is realized by a knot one crossing change away from $K$. It is unknown whether there exists a complete Alexander neighbor with nontrivial Alexander…
We study several properties of the completed group ring $\widehat{\mathbb{Z}}[[t^{\widehat{\mathbb{Z}}}]]$ and the completed Alexander modules of knots. Then we prove that if the profinite completions of the groups of two knots $J$ and $K$…