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We have developed a reinforcement learning agent that often finds a minimal sequence of unknotting crossing changes for a knot diagram with up to 200 crossings, hence giving an upper bound on the unknotting number. We have used this to…

In this study of the Reidemeister moves within the classical knot theory, we focus on hard diagrams of knots and links, categorizing them as either rigid or shaky based on their adaptability to certain moves. We establish that every link…

Geometric Topology · Mathematics 2025-10-14 Michal Jablonowski

We show that every knot type admits a pair of diagrams that cannot be made identical without using Reidemeister Omega_2-moves. We also show that our proof is compatible with known results for the other move types, in the sense that every…

Geometric Topology · Mathematics 2007-05-23 Tobias J. Hagge

In the previous paper, we considered a link diagram invariant of Hass and Nowik type using regular smoothing and unknotting number, to estimate the number of Reidemeister moves needed for unlinking. In this paper, we introduce a new link…

Geometric Topology · Mathematics 2011-03-29 Chuichiro Hayashi , Miwa Hayashi

The unknotting number is the classical invariant of a knot. However, its determination is difficult in general. To obtain the unknotting number from definition one has to investigate all possible diagrams of the knot. We tried to show the…

Geometric Topology · Mathematics 2013-06-25 Kang-Il Ri , Yun-Ho An , Chang-Il Rim

Deformations of knots and links in ambient space can be studied combinatorially on their diagrams via local modifications called Reidemeister moves. While it is well-known that, in order to move between equivalent diagrams with Reidemeister…

Geometric Topology · Mathematics 2025-04-07 Corentin Lunel , Arnaud de Mesmay , Jonathan Spreer

We provide an upper bound on the number of ordered Reidemeister moves required to pass between two diagrams of the same link. This bound is in terms of the number of unordered Reidemeister moves required.

Geometric Topology · Mathematics 2014-10-01 Julian Gold

Frequently, knots are enumerated by their crossing number. However, the number of knots with crossing number $c$ grows exponentially with $c$, and to date computer-assisted proofs can only classify diagrams up to around twenty crossings.…

Geometric Topology · Mathematics 2018-12-03 Yoav Moriah , Jessica S. Purcell

We show that there is a knot satisfying the property that for each minimal crossing number diagram of the knot and each single crossing of the diagram, changing the crossing results in a diagram for a knot whose unknotting number is at…

Geometric Topology · Mathematics 2018-01-03 Mark Brittenham , Susan Hermiller

If a rectangular diagram represents the trivial knot, then it can be deformed into the rectangular diagram with only two vertical edges by a finite sequence of merge operations and exchange operations, without increasing the number of…

Geometric Topology · Mathematics 2013-03-28 Chuichiro Hayashi , Sayaka Yamada

In this article we discuss applications of neural networks to recognising knots and, in particular, to the unknotting problem. One of motivations for this study is to understand how neural networks work on the example of a problem for which…

Geometric Topology · Mathematics 2022-11-28 L. H. Kauffman , N. E. Russkikh , I. A. Taimanov

We show that if a classical knot diagram satisfies a certain combinatorial condition then it is minimal with respect to the number of classical crossings. This statement is proved by using the Kauffman bracket and the construction of atoms…

Geometric Topology · Mathematics 2007-05-23 Vassily Olegovich Manturov

We introduce an up-down coloring of a virtual-link diagram. The colorabilities give a lower bound of the minimum number of Reidemeister moves of type II which are needed between two 2-component virtual-link diagrams. By using the notion of…

Geometric Topology · Mathematics 2017-03-13 Kanako Oshiro , Ayaka Shimizu , Yoshiro Yaguchi

We describe a method of encoding various types of link diagrams, including those with classical, flat, rigid, welded, and virtual crossings. We show that this method may be used to encode link diagrams, up to equivalence, in a notation…

Geometric Topology · Mathematics 2013-05-03 Chad Musick

In this paper we present a systematic method to generate prime knot and prime link minimal triple-point projections, and then classify all classical prime knots and prime links with triple-crossing number at most four. We also extend the…

Geometric Topology · Mathematics 2020-05-25 Michal Jablonowski , Lukasz Trojanowski

Every classical or virtual knot is equivalent to the unknot via a sequence of extended Reidemeister moves and the so-called forbidden moves. The minimum number of forbidden moves necessary to unknot a given knot is an invariant we call the…

Geometric Topology · Mathematics 2018-08-14 Alissa Crans , Sandy Ganzell , Blake Mellor

Rotational tangle diagrams have been proven to be extremely important in the study of quantum invariants, as they provide a natural passage between topology and quantum algebra. In this paper, we give a detailed description of several…

Geometric Topology · Mathematics 2025-06-19 Jorge Becerra , Kevin van Helden

Both classical and virtual knots arise as formal Gauss diagrams modulo some abstract moves corresponding to Reidemeister moves. If we forget about both over/under crossings structure and writhe numbers of knots modulo the same Reidemeister…

Geometric Topology · Mathematics 2009-02-03 Vassily Olegovich Manturov

The unknotting number of a knot is the minimum number of crossings one must change to turn that knot into the unknot. The algebraic unknotting number is the minimum number of crossing changes needed to transform a knot into an Alexander…

Geometric Topology · Mathematics 2016-06-22 Kenan Ince

We provide an explicit upper bound on the number of Reidemeister moves required to pass between two diagrams of the same link. This leads to a conceptually simple solution to the equivalence problem for links.

Geometric Topology · Mathematics 2011-06-21 Alexander Coward , Marc Lackenby