Related papers: RL unknotter, hard unknots and unknotting number

This paper gives infinitely many examples of unknot diagrams that are hard, in the sense that the diagrams need to be made more complicated by Reidemeister moves before they can be simplified. In order to construct these diagrams, we prove…

Let $D$ be a knot diagram, and let ${\mathcal D}$ denote the set of diagrams that can be obtained from $D$ by crossing exchanges. If $D$ has $n$ crossings, then ${\mathcal D}$ consists of $2^n$ diagrams. A folklore argument shows that at…

Determining unknotting numbers is a large and widely studied problem. We consider the more general question of the unknotting number of a spatial graph. We show the unknotting number of spatial graphs is subadditive. Let $g$ be an embedding…

In this paper a classification of Reidemeister moves, which is the most refined, is introduced. In particular, this classification distinguishes some $\Omega_3$-moves that only differ in how the three strands that are involved in the move…

This note has an experimental nature and contains no new theorems. We introduce certain moves for classical knot diagrams that for all the very many examples we have tested them on give a monotonic complete simplification. A complete…

We construct a new order 1 invariant for knot diagrams. We use it to determine the minimal number of Reidemeister moves needed to pass between certain pairs of knot diagrams.

We introduce a new numerical invariant of knots and links from the descending diagrams. It is considered to live between the unknotting number and the bridge number.

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.…

We present a sequence of diagrams of the unknot for which the minimum number of Reidemeister moves required to pass to the trivial diagram is quadratic with respect to the number of crossings. These bounds apply both in $S^2$ and in $\R^2$.

The unknotting number of knots is a difficult quantity to compute, and even its behavior under basic satelliting operations is not understood. We establish a lower bound on the unknotting number of cable knots and iterated cable knots…

We report on our success on solving the problem of untangling braids up to length 20 and width 4. We use feed-forward neural networks in the framework of reinforcement learning to train the agent to choose Reidemeister moves to untangle…

A large number of heuristics have been proposed to optimize the reinforcement fine-tuning of LLMs. However, inconsistent claims are made from time to time, making this area elusive. Reflecting on this situation, two fundamental questions…

In this paper, we study knot diagrams for which the underlying graph has treewidth two. We give a linear time algorithm for the following problem: given a knot diagram of treewidth two, does it represent the unknot? We also show that for a…

We explore the application of automated reasoning techniques to unknot detection, a classical problem of computational topology. We adopt a two-pronged experimental approach, using a theorem prover to try to establish a positive result…

We show that the knots $K\in\{4_1,5_1\}$ can be paired with a corresponding knot $K^\prime$ such that $u(K\#K^\prime)<u(K)+u(K^\prime)$. As a consequence unknotting number fails to be additive for these knots. We also provide a candidate…

Noting that cycle diagrams of permutations visually resemble grid diagrams used to depict knots and links in topology, we consider the knot (or link) obtained from the cycle diagram of a permutation. We show that the permutations which…

Node-connectivity augmentation is a fundamental network design problem. We are given a $k$-node connected graph $G$ together with an additional set of links, and the goal is to add a cheap subset of links to $G$ to make it $(k+1)$-node…

We consider a natural model of random knotting- choose a knot diagram at random from the finite set of diagrams with n crossings. We tabulate diagrams with 10 and fewer crossings and classify the diagrams by knot type, allowing us to…

We construct a new type of geometric knot theory, plumbers' knots, and solve the problems of distinguishing and enumerating such knots at a fixed level of complexity. (v2) Minor edits, added theorem 3.18. (v3) Substantial revisions,…

We present four models for a random graph and show that, in each case, the probability that a graph is intrinsically knotted goes to one as the number of vertices increases. We also argue that, for $k \geq 18$, most graphs of order $k$ are…