Related papers: A dimer view on Fox's trapezoidal conjecture

The Alexander polynomial (1928) is the first polynomial invariant of links devised to help distinguish links up to isotopy. Fox's conjecture (1962) -- stating that the absolute values of the coefficients of the Alexander polynomial for any…

Fox's conjecture from 1962, that the absolute values of the coefficients of the Alexander polynomial of an alternating link are trapezoidal, has remained stubbornly open to this date. Recently Fox's conjecture was settled for all special…

We investigate Fox's trapezoidal conjecture for alternating links. We show that it holds for diagrammatic Murasugi sums of special alternating links, where all sums involved have length less than three (which includes diagrammatic…

The trapezoidal Fox conjecture states that the coefficient sequence of the Alexander polynomial of an alternating knot is unimodal. We are motivated by a harder question, the strong Fox conjecture, which asks whether the coefficient…

Fox conjectured the Alexander polynomial of an alternating knot is trapezoidal, i.e. the coefficients first increase, then stabilize and finally decrease in a symmetric way. Recently, Hirasawa and Murasugi further conjectured a relation…

The central question of knot theory is that of distinguishing links up to isotopy. The first polynomial invariant of links devised to help answer this question was the Alexander polynomial (1928). Almost a century after its introduction, it…

We prove that the Alexander polynomials of certain families of alternating 4-braid knots satisfy Fox's Trapezoidal Conjecture. Moreover, we give explicit formulas for the signature and for the first 4 coefficients of the Alexander…

We consider Conway polynomials of two-bridge links as Euler continuant polynomials. As a consequence, we obtain new and elementary proofs of classical Murasugi's 1958 alternating theorem and Hartley's 1979 trapezoidal theorem. We give a…

The Torres formula, which relates the Alexander polynomial of a link to the Alexander polyomial of its sublinks, admits a generalization to the twisted setting due to Morifuji. This paper uses twisted Reidemeister torsion to obtain a second…

We give a geometric proof of the following result of Juhasz. \emph{Let $a_g$ be the leading coefficient of the Alexander polynomial of an alternating knot $K$. If $|a_g|<4$ then $K$ has a unique minimal genus Seifert surface.} In doing so,…

Let $K$ be a genus $g$ alternating knot with Alexander polynomial $\Delta_K(T)=\sum_{i=-g}^ga_iT^i$. We show that if $|a_g|=|a_{g-1}|$, then $K$ is the torus knot $T_{2g+1,\pm2}$. This is a special case of the Fox Trapezoidal Conjecture.…

For arborescent links, we present an efficient method of computing their Alexander polynomials. Applying this method, we express the Alexander polynomials of Montesinos links in terms of certain functions associated to rational tangles…

For a reduced alternating diagram of a knot with a prime determinant $p,$ the Kauffman-Harary conjecture states that every non-trivial Fox $p$-coloring of the knot assigns different colors to its arcs. In this paper, we prove a…

In recent years, twisted Alexander polynomial has been playing an important role in low-dimensional topology. For Montesinos links, we develop an efficient method to compute the twisted Alexander polynomial associated to any linear…

We present an accurate detailed exposition of the proof of existence of the Alexander-Conway polynomial (of links in 3-dimensional space). Other proofs were given by J. Alexander, J. Conway, V. Mantourov and L. Kauffman.

In 2018 Kashaev introduced a diagrammatic link invariant conjectured to be twice the Levine-Tristram signature. If true, the conjecture would provide a simple way of computing the Levine-Tristram signature of a link by taking the signature…

As a generalization of a fundamental result about the Alexander polynomial of links, we give a description of a Torres condition for the twisted Alexander polynomial of links associated to a unimodular representation.

In 1971, Kunio Murasugi proved a necessary condition on a knot's Alexander polynomial for that knot to be periodic of prime power order. In this paper I present an alternate proof of Murasugi's condition which is subsequently used to extend…

We provide necessary conditions for the Alexander polynomials of algebraically split component-preservingly amphicheiral links. We raise a conjecture that the Alexander polynomial of an algebraically split component-preservingly…

It follows from earlier work of Silver-Williams and the authors that twisted Alexander polynomials detect the unknot and the Hopf link. We now show that twisted Alexander polynomials also detect the trefoil and the figure-8 knot, that…