Related papers: Knots not detected by any trace
We show that any closed incompressible surface in the complement of a positive knot is algebraically non-split from the knot, positive knots cannot bound non-free incompressible Seifert surfaces and that the splitability and the primeness…
We prove that a special alternating knot does not decompose as a non-trivial band sum. This restricts concordances from special alternating knots, and we conjecture that special alternating knots are ribbon concordance minimal. We verify…
Simple closed curves in the plane can be mapped to nontrivial knots under the action of origami foldings that allow the paper to self-intersect. We show all tame knot types may be produced in this manner, motivating the development of a new…
We give a number theoretic proof of the integrality of certain BPS invariants of knots. The formulas for these numbers are sums involving binomial coefficients and the M\"obius function. We also prove a conjecture about further divisibility…
It is shown that every knot or link is the set of complex tangents of a 3-sphere smoothly embedded in the three-dimensional complex space. We show in fact that a one-dimensional submanifold of a closed orientable 3-manifold can be realised…
We introduce a numerical invariant \beta(K) of a knot K which measures how non-alternating K is. We prove an inequality between \beta (K) and the (knot Floer) thickness of K. As an application we show that all Montesinos knots have…
Kanenobu has given infinite families of knots with the same HOMFLY polynomials. We show that these knots also have the same sl(n) and HOMFLY homologies, thus giving the first example of an infinite family of knots undistinguishable by these…
To each rail knotoid we associate two unoriented knots along with their oriented counterparts, thus deriving invariants for rail knotoids based on these associations. We then translate them to invariants of rail isotopy for rail arcs.
Neuwirth asked if any non-trivial knot in the 3-sphere can be embedded in a closed surface so that the complement of the surface is a connected essential surface for the knot complement. In this paper, we examine some variations on this…
Let n be any integer greater than two. We prove that there exists a projection P having the following properties. (1) P is not the projection of any unknotted knot. (2) The singular point set of P consists of double points. (3) P is the…
By using parity arguments we prove that free knots are, generally, not invertible.
We prove that the detection rate of n-crossing alternating links by many standard link invariants decays exponentially in n, implying that they detect alternating links with probability zero. This phenomenon applies broadly, in particular…
The construction of knots via annular twisting has been used to create families of knots yielding the same manifold via Dehn surgery. Prior examples have all involved Dehn surgery where the surgery slope is an integral multiple of 2. In…
The Kinoshita graph is a particular embedding in the 3-sphere of a graph with three edges, two vertices and no loops. It has the remarkable property that although the removal of any edge results in an unknotted loop, the Kinoshita graph is…
An invariant of knots is constructed from an integral for geometric braids due to Kohno and Kontsevich. It takes values in a quotient by a certain ideal of the algebra generated by chord diagrams over the circle.
The aim of this survey article is to highlight several notoriously intractable problems about knots and links, as well as to provide a brief discussion of what is known about them.
Freedman and Krushkal showed that if the surgery conjecture and the $s$-cobordism conjecture hold for all topological 4-manifolds, then every link with pairwise zero linking numbers is topologically round handle slice. Kim, Powell, and…
Every knot can be embedded in the union of finitely many half planes with a common boundary line in such a way that the portion of the knot in each half plane is a properly embedded arc. The minimal number of such half planes is called the…
In contrast with knots, whose properties depend only on their extrinsic topology in $S^3$, there is a rich interplay between the intrinsic structure of a graph and the extrinsic topology of all embeddings of the graph in $S^3$ . For…
A knot is an an embedding of a circle into three-dimensional space. We say that a knot is unknotted if there is an ambient isotopy of the embedding to a standard circle. By representing knots via planar diagrams, we discuss the problem of…