Related papers: Unknotting number is not additive under connected …

The classical Kneser-Milnor theorem says that every closed oriented connected 3-dimensional manifold admits a unique connected sum decomposition into manifolds that cannot be decomposed any further. We discuss to what degree such…

In this article, we defined a knotted subgroup of a Lie group and considered a geometric notion of equivalence among them. We characterized these knotted subgroups in terms of one-parameter subgroups and provided examples in the case of…

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…

The trace of $n$-framed surgery on a knot in $S^3$ is a 4-manifold homotopy equivalent to the 2-sphere. We characterise when a generator of the second homotopy group of such a manifold can be realised by a locally flat embedded 2-sphere…

It is known that any surface knot can be transformed to an unknotted surface knot or a surface knot which has a diagram with no triple points by a finite number of 1-handle additions. The minimum number of such 1-handles is called the…

This short survey, which was written to accompany a minicourse at the BIRS conference "Topology in dimension 4.5", concerns invariants of knotted $2$-spheres in $S^4$, also known as $2$-knots. It covers invariants extracted from the…

Let $K$ be a knot type for which the quadratic term of the Conway polynomial is nontrivial, and let $\gamma: \mathbb{R}\to \mathbb{R}^3$ be an analytic $\mathbb{Z}$-periodic function with non-vanishing derivative which parameterizes a knot…

We prove that there are compact submanifolds of the 3-sphere whose interiors are not homeomorphic to any geometric limit of hyperbolic knot complements.

An essential goal in the study of finite type invariants of some objects (knots, manifolds) is the construction of a universal finite type invariant, universal in the sense that it contains all finite type invariants of the given objects.…

Given a 3-manifold $Y$ and a free homotopy class in $[S^1,Y]$, we investigate the set of topological concordance classes of knots in $Y \times [0,1]$ representing the given homotopy class. The concordance group of knots in the 3-sphere acts…

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…

In this article we study a partial ordering on knots in the 3-sphere where K_1 is greater than or equal to K_2 if there is an epimorphism from the knot group of K_1 onto the knot group of K_2 which preserves peripheral structure. If K_1 is…

A fixed knot $K$ acts via Murasugi sum on the space $\mathcal{S}$ of isotopy classes of knots. This operation endows $\mathcal{S}$ with a directed graph structure denoted by $M\kern-1pt SG(K)$. We show that any given family of knots in…

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,…

We consider the cosmetic surgery problem for two-bridge knots in the 3-sphere. It is seen that all the two-bridge knots at most 9 crossings other than $9_{27} = S(49,19)=C[2,2,-2,2,2,-2]$ admits no purely cosmetic surgery pairs. Then we…

Let $K$ be a knot with an unknotting tunnel $\gamma$ and suppose that $K$ is not a 2-bridge knot. There is an invariant $\rho = p/q \in \mathbb{Q}/2 \mathbb{Z}$, $p$ odd, defined for the pair $(K, \gamma)$. The invariant $\rho$ has…

Using Taubes' periodic ends theorem, Auckly gave examples of toroidal and hyperbolic irreducible integer homology spheres which are not surgery on a knot in the three-sphere. We give an obstruction to a homology sphere being surgery on a…

We study the $\mathbb{CP}^2$-slicing number of knots, i.e. the smallest $m\geq 0$ such that a knot $K\subseteq S^3$ bounds a properly embedded, null-homologous disk in a punctured connected sum $(\#^m\mathbb{CP}^2)^{\times}$. We give a…

We show that the proportion of hyperbolic knots among all of the prime knots of $n$ or fewer crossings does not converge to $1$ as $n$ approaches infinity. Moreover, we show that if $K$ is a nontrivial knot then the proportion of satellites…

An invariant $\mu_{\alpha}(K)$ of fibred knots $K$ in a homology sphere is defined for each $\alpha \in {\bold S}{\bold U}_n$ as follows. Since the knot is fibred, the knot complement is described by an element of the mapping class group,…